This Alien Shore
by Laryna6
Summary: Manga AU oneshot anthology. In a world very different from the anime, Kaworu's sick of Shinji acting like a selfish jerk and Shinji doesn't want to be friends with a kitten-killing weirdo. Then Armisael infects the Fifth Child with the First's love of Shinji. Maybe, somewhere, that could possibly have ended well. Or not. Kaworu/Shinji/Rei, except when it isn't.
1. What Will It Take?

_Rather than being a chaptered fic, this will be a set of different for want of a nail, or rather the right words or realization at the right time AUs diverging from the manga. I've tried to make them comprehensible to people who haven't read volumes 9-11, but since the character dynamic is so different and there are a lot of important conversations that's kind of tough, sorry._

_Manga!Kaworu is a huge contrast to the anime version._

_Anime!Kaworu thinks Shinji is admirable. The manga version thinks Shinji's a selfish bastard, and then he's mind-whammed due to being connected via Armisael to Rei as she died into loving someone who definitely doesn't even want to be his friend, and then there's the ancient conspiracy that had him conceived and intends to control him cradle to grave, and the only freedom from them is in the grave._

_It ends up much more of a tragedy since it's not just a matter of Shinji losing the only person who is able to be genuinely nice to and supportive of him due to not being a hedgehog, but like the manga author says, one ends up wishing that Shinji would understand Kaworu's feelings, whether one is a slash fan or a Shinji/Rei fan. There's a reprise of an earlier conversation where Kaworu and Rei (III) have switched roles that highlights that now Kaworu is the one who has changed and come to care for someone, while Rei is the outsider who doesn't care about Shinji and the others, not remembering any better than to be devoted to Gendo. _

* * *

"You're the one who told me that. Don't you remember?" the Fifth Child asked her, still holding the wrist he'd grabbed to get her attention and make her talk to him instead of ignoring him as they passed in the halls the way she had Shinji.

She didn't remember, they both knew that.

"Do you want to?" he asked now, and Rei looked at him, startled by the offer. "Don't mistake me, I'm not doing this for your benefit," Kaworu said, not smiling at all. "In fact, I think I hate you. More than Shinji hates me."

* * *

Standing by the shore, torn between just not caring anymore and the frustration that Kaworu's weirdness always managed to drag out of him (usually by alarming him), Shinji demanded (again), "Why are you being so weird?"

"Because I'm about to die, you selfish bastard!" Kaworu said, grabbing Shinji's shirt.

"What… You mean, you want me to care about you, to be your friend, when I've lost so many other people, _because _I'll lose you?" Shinji's eyes widened, because even if Kaworu had been heartless about Rei's death, and he'd killed the kitten (rather than let it starve to death alone), he hadn't thought he was _that _cruel. Just… weird. Worryingly insane, but not actively trying to hurt anyone, if only because he didn't see any reason to do that.

"I told you that the First Child's thoughts flowed into me, didn't I? That was why she loved you, because you didn't see _her_ as expendable. You cared whether or not _she_ lived or died." Her, Rei, not Kaworu. "I'm not just like her, but that's what caused the difference between us. She met you, she had someone who cared whether she lived or died." That was what Rei told him herself, and Kaworu now understood her words. "To the old men, I've always been expendable, and…" Kaworu couldn't bring himself to tell Shinji the rest.

"You mean, you're like Rei?" Shinji asked, remembering the room full of clones. How Ritsuko killed them all, just like that. How Rei must have thought she was expendable because she'd been replaced before.

So that was why Kaworu was so weird, the way Rei had been so weird at first. If he'd been raised by someone else to fight angels, or to be made into a dummy plug, the way Shinji's father used Rei?

"I said that, didn't I? You hate me that much, just leaving me when you heard _she _was back… You don't care at all about my feelings. You don't even care about the First Child's feelings when they're in me," Kaworu accused him, and Shinji could see the pain and desperation behind that anger now.

"Because you're another guy," Shinji said, frustrated, the way he had when Kaworu kissed him, supposedly because it was less trouble to stop Shinji hyperventilating that way than to get a bag, although then he'd talked about Rei's feelings and… So _weird_. Didn't Kaworu even realize that made a difference? …Would he? When Rei had also been so ignorant? And not understanding that, would he think the only reason Shinji refused to care if he lived or died was that it was Kaworu?

But Shinji didn't want to care. Not when Touji was dead, he'd seen Rei die and now she wasn't the Rei he'd known, Kensuke left… He didn't want to become Kaworu's friend because he didn't want to lose another friend, especially not when Kaworu admitted he was about to die.

"What does that have to do with it?" Kaworu demanded, frustrated. "If guys didn't like guys, then why did the First Child's feelings do this to me? Why did I have to realize this now?" The other teenager asked, and Shinji realized Kaworu's red eyes were wet. "I didn't know it was possible for someone to care if something like me lived or died, I thought I was the only one who gave a damn about the fact I'm going to die: why did I have to find out otherwise when it's almost too late to find anyone that will even remember me? And why did she have to make me care about being loved back by someone like _you?_ When you show _her _kindness like that, but you just leave me as soon as she's back even after I let you stay even though you admitted that the only reason you wanted to stay was that you hated me!"

"That isn't true," Shinji objected. He'd wanted to stay with Kaworu because he couldn't stand the thought of being comforted or sharing grief over Rei, like with Misato. Kaworu didn't care, or so he'd thought, so he could stay there without being reminded of Rei. Without having to talk about her death, when that would make it real. "I don't hate you, Kaworu. I just don't want any more friends, I already said that! I don't want to lose any more people."

"So if you hadn't lost so many people, would you care for me now?" Shinji hadn't cared before, but as Kaworu said when he confronted Shinji, what mattered to Kaworu was _now_. Because now was when he realized he wanted someone to care, now was when he had so little time left to live.

Wait. "What if you had her back?" Kaworu asked, both hands fisted in Shinji's shirt now. "If I gave you her back, would you stop hating me?"

"What? That's not… Is that possible?" Shinji didn't care enough to correct Kaworu again, that Shinji didn't hate him (he was just trying to be indifferent). Not compared to Rei, and did that prove Kaworu right? Or was it that Kaworu didn't understand this, and indifference was bad enough? Gendo had abandoned him out of indifference: Shinji almost wished his father had cared enough to hate him. That might have been better.

"I told you, didn't I? That her feelings flowed into me when the angel connected us. The way she felt each time you touched her. The promise the two of you made." And Shinji could see that just like Shinji himself, Kaworu wanted a promise like that. Wanted someone to protect, wanted someone to care enough to try to protect him. "The First Child isn't the one you knew, but she has the same soul. What if she regained her original feelings for you? What if _I _gave them back to her? Would you care about me then?" If only as the person who gave Shinji back his bond with the First Child.

"So you really do have Rei's feelings," Shinji said slowly, haltingly, trying to remember what Kaworu said after that kiss. Shinji had barely been paying attention, because he hadn't wanted to make the effort to understand Kaworu, wanted to keep thinking of him as weird and heartless even when he took Shinji to the infirmary when Shinji feinted in his arms after Rei's death. Even when he gave Shinji a place to stay because Shinji didn't want to go back to Misato's.

If Rei's feelings could make Kaworu act like that, then Rei really had cared for him, hadn't she? Kaworu had even asked if it was love, describing the same sensation Shinji felt now, thinking of Rei. Yearning and a painful tightness in his stomach, like being trapped by the force of it, the pressure of that longing making him almost ill, making him hurt like he was dying, like he'd die if he didn't get Rei back. If she no longer loved him back. If Rei loved him this much, enough to make the weird Kaworu who hadn't cared about Rei's death look so _desperate_, the same desperation Shinji had felt when he'd tried to save her from the angel, watched her blow herself up and die in front of him, then no one had ever loved Shinji like that.

"I said so, didn't I?" Kaworu looked even more hurt and frustrated. "You keep refusing to acknowledge these feelings: it's because they're in me now, isn't it. You don't care if I die, but you care about her. So? If she lives and loves you again, will you care? Will you remember me?" If Kaworu was the one to give him back Rei? Give him back the girl he loved, who loved him in return?

Lucky bitch. Selfish bastard. Kaworu wished he could hate them both, but the feelings that tightened around him now wouldn't let him hate _Shinji._ Even if it wasn't Kaworu's hand he'd taken, even if saying that it was because Kaworu was a guy when clearly that didn't matter implied that he would be willing to kiss, willing to be close if it was the First Child.

Damn her, and damn Armisael for inflicting this on him. Why now? Why when he was about to die? SEELE would surely give him the order soon, and if he refused the old men would have him hunted down. He'd known this was coming for his entire life, since coming in contact with Lilith would also end his existence as an individual. Either way he would die, and the old men hadn't cared, Shinji didn't care, no one did. Kaworu had accepted that, accepted that Lilim didn't care about each other so they weren't going to care about his life or death, but then! Shinji was willing to care about the death of a being like Kaworu… when it was the First Child.

"You can do that?" Shinji asked, and _now _he looked at Kaworu, even if it was just to see if he was telling the truth about the First Child. "Wasn't it the angel? It infected both your Evas." Rei and Kaworu, too. "So how can you fix her?"

"What do you care?" Kaworu asked, because they both knew Shinji didn't. "As long as you get her back, does it matter how I do it? You hate me anyway." And maybe that was a good thing, Kaworu realized, because it meant Shinji wouldn't hate him any more when he found out Kaworu was so weird because he was an angel, one of the things Shinji killed. "But your precious First Child is an angel. That's how her soul could transfer to another body."

"What? You're, you're lying!" Shinji said, grabbing Kaworu now, the way he had when Kaworu said it was stupid for Rei to blow herself up like that. "You take that back!" How dare he speak ill of the almost-dead, when the Rei Shinji knew wasn't there anymore? Even if that could change?

"It's the truth! I'm the one who got her feelings forced into me, aren't I?" Had Shinji already forgotten? "The First Child's soul is Lilith's, and your father wants to use her to cause Third Impact, even though that would kill her." Kill everyone, destroying their individual selves. "And she still loved you, so much it's making me ache like this!" Kaworu let go of Shinji with one hand to put it over his own heart, and Shinji finally noticed the flash of pain in crimson eyes. "But you don't care about me at all, do you?"

Finally put it together that if Kaworu's feelings were really Rei's, then he'd feel the way Rei felt if Shinji talked to her like this. If Shinji hated her. That barely gave Shinji an instant's pause, though, compared to "My father wants to use her for that?"

Kaworu grimaced, anger and pain, or rather anger caused by pain. "And of course you care when it's _her_, not when it's me. When she refuses, he'll just try to kill her and use the next one Lilith's soul inhabits, but you'd try to protectthe First Child, won't you? Not me." Never Kaworu. "Me you'd be happy to kill to stop Third Impact, wouldn't you? So you can try to be happy together with _your _angel. Selfish _bastard. _You didn't even realize how much it hurt her that you went and stood by the Second Child's bedside every day, so of course you don't care about my feelings." When Shinji didn't even care about Rei's enough to notice them, and still Rei had cared that much about him, and now Kaworu was cursed to. "I can try to give you back her, too, but if you want either of them, you have to promise that you'll remember me."

"You can… Asuka?" When she was also a shell of her former self, just like Rei? Also because of an angel? That made sense, though, when Asuka hadn't died and all her memories were in there, so…

"Well?" Kaworu demanded. "If I give you back the First Child, if I'm responsible for your chance at happiness, will you remember me?" the Fifth Child asked longingly, and Shinji was suddenly struck by the resemblance to not just Rei but Ritsuko. Ritsuko, who loved his father when Gendo would never return that emotion. He'd been happy enough to use it, though, the way Kaworu was offering to do this for Shinji because Kaworu loved him now. Loved him enough to give him Rei, the one Shinji loved instead, if that was the only thing he could do to… to what? Make Shinji notice him? Make Shinji care?

No, to make Shinji think of him when he was gone, the boy realized. If he owed Rei to Kaworu, then would he think of Kaworu, dead Kaworu, when he saw Rei? "I'll remember you," Shinji knew, and maybe he did hate Kaworu a little now, because he was so tired of mourning friends. That was why he'd tried not to care about Kaworu. Why did Kaworu have to care about him now? When Shinji had just used his hospitality, when Shinji had called him weird and not even cared enough to actually reject him? When he hadn't wanted to deal with Kaworu's feelings, wrapped up in his own pain?

Kaworu looked delighted, and now he looked more like himself, the weird and heartless one that didn't care about Rei's death, could view kissing as a way to get Shinji to stop hyperventilating that was less annoying than having to find a bag. "Prove it. Prove you want her back enough to give me what I want. Remember, she'll see my feelings and memories when she gets hers back. Do you want her to know that you'd reject her feelings so easily?"

"What do you want?" Shinji asked, annoyed because that was much easier.

"A kiss." When Shinji gaped, Kaworu seemed to take it as an invitation, but, "Not now, I have to report to the old men. I want you to take my hand like you took hers, and kiss me like I'm her. You can think of it as kissing her, because she'll remember it afterwards. I'll bring Rei to my room when I'm done dealing with the old men. You can be there, or I'll give her back her feelings _and _mine, so she can see that you don't care enough to be there for her. It's her fault I'm feeling this pain, so she can suffer what I'm feeling because of her." Rei could feel what it was like to know Shinji rejected her. "She should know what a selfish bastard you are, and_ she_ can feel what it's like to love you and have you hate me. If guys don't like guys, then isn't it even more impossible for something like you to love an angel?" Kaworu looked away when he asked that. "Whether I make her love you again or make her hate you the way you hate me, either way you'll remember me, so it's all the same, isn't it?" When Shinji would never care for Kaworu?

* * *

Kaworu shifted his grasp to her hand, but he never let go of her, almost pulling her towards his room. She didn't remember why she should defy her old man (Lucky bitch, to only have one of them), and he couldn't risk her going to Gendo when he hadn't seen if Shinji was even there yet.

His smile of delight was more than half smirk when he saw Shinji sitting on the bed.

"R-Ayanami?" Shinji asked, hopeful and nervous. The flat computer monitor was still where Shinji'd paused it in the random romance he'd been watching to take his mind off Rei's death, and the magazine Kaworu was reading when Shinji left after hearing that Rei was alive had gotten tossed on the floor. Shinji had spent a lot of time with nothing to do but let his eyes wander around Kaworu's room, trying not to think of things like whether or not this would work, what Kaworu might make him do or if Rei really was an angel.

"Ikari. I was told that you decided to pay for the Fifth Child to restore as much of my memory of my previous self as he could," Rei said, and Shinji's face fell a little.

Maybe it was the word 'pay' that did it. "Yes, but can he really do it?" the one human among them asked, and Kaworu knew Shinji didn't want to go through with it, at least the kiss part, but he wouldn't back out if it was _Rei _that needed him to do something.

"I believe so. The two of us are the same, after all… almost," Rei corrected herself, remembering the words Kaworu had told her were her own.

Kaworu smirked again, trying to feel triumph, and sat down on his bed next to Shinji. "The kiss, remembering me and a third thing, but I think you'll be happy to do the last part," he said, and wondered why saying that made him feel sadness. Shinji had to be angry with him after this, when Kaworu had decided to be as selfish as Shinji. Shinji hadn't hesitated to attack him with his bare hands before, so it wouldn't be a problem for Shinji to kill him, Kaworu thought. He didn't want SEELE to be the ones to bring him down.

Shinji gulped: would he really have to let Kaworu kiss him? Again? But it was for Rei, and she would remember it afterwards, so it was just like kissing Rei, he tried to tell himself. It wasn't like Asuka hadn't already stolen his first kiss. Kaworu sat there expectantly, and Shinji found himself thinking of Dr. Akagi once again, the woman his father had treated like he loved in order to make use of her. Did it make it better or worse that Kaworu knew Shinji would be pretending, had practically demanded that he pretend?

That was when he noticed that Kaworu didn't smell like boy, like Touji or Kensuke. What Shinji smelled now, sitting next to him, was much more like what he'd smelled in Rei's barren rooms. It wasn't that Kaworu smelled like a girl, either: he'd been close enough to Asuka and Misato to recognize the scent of a woman. Kaworu didn't smell like that.

Rei didn't either.

It was still much easier to ask "Kaworu, what are you?" than to admit that Kaworu had been telling the truth about Rei and this meant Kaworu was also an angel. Was Rei really an angel? Was his father really planning to use her to cause Third Impact? But why the resemblance to his mother, why… why all of this?

Kaworu didn't respond right away, a strange expression on his face. "It makes me wonder why you want to fall in love, when it's such a painful and disgusting feeling. I felt sick when you said that, like something was squeezing me to death. Then again, why do I want something like you to fall in love with me? I don't hate you, even if you are a jerk." Kaworu's smile was barely a token one, obviously false. "That's right, I'm the Twelfth Angel. I don't want to merge with Lilith, but the old men ordered me to do it today. If I don't, they'll have me hunted down and killed." The angel looked down at his hands. "It doesn't make much difference to me whether I cause Third Impact or not. Either way I'll die, whether by having my individual existence obliterated or my body destroyed. I refuse to give them what they want, give them my death as well as my life."

Shinji found himself relaxing a little, because he hadn't wanted to kill Kaworu, kill a person. Like Rei.

"So, how does it feel to have something like me in love with you? Does it disgust you? Will it be fine when I'm gone and it's the First Child instead?" Kaworu frowned. "Why aren't you happy? You hate me, so you should be glad I'm hurting like this. Now kiss me and let me pretend you care about my feelings. Kiss me like I'm _her_."

Shinji glanced at Rei, then looked at Kaworu, blushing. With Rei right here?

Kaworu's red eyes were determined, all the more so for the vulnerability underneath. Yes, with her here, when Shinji had left Kaworu to go running off to see her the instant he heard Rei had survived before. He had to pay attention to Kaworu instead of Rei for a few minutes: was that really such a hard thing for him to do? "You really don't care at all about my feelings, do you," he said, and barely managed to hold back tears.

He really could hate the First Child: he'd first cried when Armisael connected him to her, he'd felt all this pain because of her. And Shinji, but hating Shinji? He couldn't, not when he wanted Shinji to be close to him so desperately, wanted to imagine Shinji caring and forget the reality so much.

Shinji looked at Rei again, who wondered why he was looking at her. Wasn't Shinji the one who had agreed to this?

Had he done it for her sake, she wondered? If she had loved him, did he love her? If he did, then she wanted to remember. She wanted to believe that Shinji loved her enough to sacrifice for her, so she nodded, ignoring the signs that he didn't really want to do this.

Gulping, Shinji nodded. "Alright, Kaworu," he said, and closed his eyes.

Kaworu scowled. "I wanted _you _to kiss… Nevermind." Beggers couldn't be choosers, he didn't have all the time in the world, and he would have to work for his dream, even if it was pathetic that all he could have was a fantasy like this, before the end. Still, it was more than he'd aspired to do with the life that wasn't his before.

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Shinji, and let Shinji's attempt to pull back end up with him lying on his back again, Kaworu's chest on top of his. Kaworu's own eyes closed, trying not to see the reality, trying to focus on these feelings. Still, he murmured, "You have to at least act like it's real. Do something with your hands."

Shinji almost jumped when he said that, and irritated Kaworu thought that Shinji didn't have any right to say that Kaworu was the weird one, really. Lilim were all weird: the fact they thought their insanity was normal didn't make them any less insane. Still, he didn't care what made Shinji react that way when at least he carefully wrapped his arms around Kaworu, nervous but not wanting to offend. "I'm not helping her until I get a real kiss," Kaworu reminded him, brushing his lips briefly against Shinji's and sighing when he heard the muffled eep.

"You say that, but guys don't…" It wasn't that easy for Shinji to make out with another guy!

"That is obviously untrue. What is true is that normally angels don't do things like this, but SEELE used human DNA to make me and obviously NERV did the same with the First Child. _I'm _the one this is unnatural for," so Shinji should shut up, stop whining, and get this done: did he really think whining about a kiss was going to make someone under a death sentence feel sorry for him? "Your father has to know what I am: do you want to risk that he'll find out that the First Child is here, with the agent SEELE sent, and haul her away before she can remember you? Oh, and if I'm not heading for Terminal Dogma by noon, SEELE will start trying to kill me, but obviously you don't care about _that_," he said, and hated the pain that ran through him when he said those words, admitted that truth. "I wish you didn't hate me," he said, with a gentler voice, and licked at Shinji's lips, thinking of the kitten's rough tongue and how he couldn't have taken care of it, the poor abandoned thing, not when he barely had any time to live at all. He would have been dead before he figured out how to nurse it back to health, and long before it was old enough to survive on its own. Not to mention that they would have experimented on it, wondering if he'd done something to it, because for an angel to go out of its way for one of Lilith's creatures?

All of his power, and there was only one thing he could accomplish: the thing he refused to do for his masters. His life really was meaningless, and they would remember him only as a disappointment. Shinji, Misato and the others at NERV who didn't know the truth would have remembered him only as a traitor, never bothering to find out if there was more to it than that. Who would care if he died when he was an angel, enemy of humanity?

Death, death was his only escape, and he had envied that kitten on some level, wished someone would do that for him, except there were so many interesting things in this world.

He didn't want to die, but he couldn't survive (not on his own), and then at least it would be over.

Without him noticing it Kaworu's presses of lips against Shinji's cheek and other touches, trying to get Shinji to respond instead of lying there so clearly unwilling became less signs of impatience and more little pleas. For Shinji to pay attention to him, for _someone _to respond, to care, to ease this loneliness.

Shinji's pride rebelled at doing this for a price, even if he was almost certain Kaworu didn't know what a whore was and would hate Shinji thinking he was being treated like one when this clearly meant something real to Kaworu, but he could respond to that need, the way he'd recognized a kindred spirit in Rei. So alone, all of them. So sad. Even Kaworu, the one Shinji went to in order to escape sadness, believing Kaworu didn't feel any.

He'd been blind to someone else's feelings yet again.

So he could at least turn the arms lying on top of Kaworu's back into a real hug, could at least open his mouth a little instead of trying to wall Kaworu out with his remembered what Kaworu asked after the other kiss: _"What's it like? To fall in love with someone? Do you want to touch the person? Kiss them? Do you feel like you don't want to lose them?"_

To Kaworu, "_It felt like it was slowly constricting my chest. Like I couldn't breathe." _Shinji had felt Kaworu's emotion during the kiss before, the one that had stunned him out of hyperventilating after Kaworu'd woken him out of another nightmare of Rei's death.

It was easier to admit it was there when he could think of it as Rei's feelings. He wanted to see it there when he thought of it that way, as proof that the girl he liked loved him back, and would love him again as soon as she remembered. Kaworu hadn't asked for this, hadn't even seemed to _like _Shinji that much before. Although the same could be said of Asuka, and she'd kissed him too.

It wasn't hard to get Kaworu to let him sit up, as long as Shinji kept holding him instead of pushing him away in shock like after the first kiss, where he'd wondered what the _hell _the weirdo thought he was doing. Kaworu was incomprehensible, and if you didn't understand people you couldn't tell _what _they'd take it into their heads to do. When Kaworu was already willing to kill defenseless animals? It said something about how little Shinji cared about his life that he'd been willing to sleep over at the maniac's. Still, Kaworu had been the one to break the kiss and start asking Shinji about feelings, trying to understand what was happening to him, Shinji saw in retrospect as he felt earnest lips on his and tried not to respond to the sheer longing there.

Except he knew this feeling. He recognized it. He didn't know about loving guys or angels but he knew what it was like to be unwanted and alone. He'd thought he was going to die when Gendo abandoned him. How could a kid look after himself? He thought he'd starve like that kitten, alone. Shinji had been taken in by someone, but he'd refused to take in that kitten, and Kaworu didn't have anyone who would want to take him in, not when he was an angel.

Shinji wanted to save Rei, though, and he hoped Rei knew that. That she felt that way, and when Kaworu, who didn't have anyone who save him, got Rei's feelings? It was hard to think of Kaworu as an angel when he was so, so fumbling.

So human. Like Misato, trying to find a connection to other people in doing this, and that was when Shinji pressed his cheek against Kaworu's, against that of someone who never _had _a mother, just pulled him close and felt him shake.

Felt the tears finally break loose, and a quiet sob as Kaworu stilled, head on Shinji's shoulder, no longer trying to kiss him. Just holding on to him desperately, desperate to be held. To cling to this belief that someone wanted him to live, that someone was willing to shelter him from the world. That someone was willing to touch him, when he was an angel and Shinji remembered what happened when Armisael touched Rei's and Kaworu's Evas, sent extensions of itself with Rei's face to envelop him. He knew how dangerous angels were, so Kaworu must think it meant something, that Shinji was doing this.

Rei found herself thinking of the broken glasses in her room, how she'd cried when she found them and didn't know why. Weren't tears supposed to mean sadness? So why did she find herself envying Kaworu the feeling that had him in its grip?

Shinji knew enough to know that he'd ruin this if he spoke up now, reminded Kaworu of Rei and their deal. He didn't want to ruin it, and not just because this could get him out of having to kiss anymore. He didn't want Kaworu to think Shinji hated him, not when Kaworu was convinced he was about to die. Dying alone and rejected: that would be so sad, as weird as it was to think of the detached and seemingly heartless because of it under the amusement Kaworu being sad. Had he been hiding it, the way Asuka always acted so nice in front of adults?

Or had he been trying to hide it from himself, so he didn't have to feel the sadness?

Shinji looked up at Rei, embarrassed a bit because even though this was just a hug it was still a hug, and that also was something guys weren't really supposed to do. Kaworu still smelled of rain and stormclouds, and Shinji realized again that it wasn't because Kaworu had just had a bath, it was because he really didn't start smelling of sweat and everything else the way humans did. On the one hand that was kind of a relief, since he could tell himself Kaworu wasn't really another guy, but was that part of what had creeped him out about Kaworu from the beginning? Something in the back of his head had noticed that something wasn't right, even though if Shinji had associated any scent with angels it would have been LCL? So why hadn't Rei bothered him? Because she'd seemed familiar on another level?

It really did feel like holding Rei, but Shinji didn't want to think of how Rei was like his mother when he could finally believe that she liked him, she _loved _him so much if just an echo of her feelings could reduce Kaworu to this. No, most of this was Kaworu's own feelings, but not feelings for Shinji, which was a relief.

Shinji somehow felt strong, being able to do this for someone. Having someone believe that he could protect them? Being able to do for someone else what Gendo, what someone should have done for Shinji? Shinji _knew _how much he wanted someone to do this for him, so he knew how much this had to mean to Kaworu. Even if he couldn't really save him or do anything, at least he could let him die happy?

Except, even though Shinji hadn't wanted to feel anything for him at all, maybe he had started caring at some point, just because Kaworu was there. He'd let Shinji crash at his place when he didn't have to do that, and maybe it wasn't all because of Rei's influence?

He didn't have to do much, just move a little sometimes, so Kaworu knew he was paying attention. That someone was listening to his cries, that his pain and what happened to him mattered to someone. Even though Shinji hadn't wanted to feel anyone else's pain, being able to do this for someone? Shinji knew he would do anything for Rei because she cared for him.

Maybe it was the part of him that was Gendo's son that was thinking of how grateful Shinji would be for this in Kaworu's place. How if Shinji managed not to ruin this, Kaworu would do _anything _for him. Even die for him, although that might not be a very big deal to Kaworu since he thought he was doomed anyway. So he might not feel it was _enough_.

(And if Rei would remember Kaworu's feelings, the way Kaworu now felt Rei's?)

Shinji felt guilty for thinking that way, but… It was still a relief when Kaworu finally stilled, not asleep but satisfied, for now, just savoring the feeling of being held. A few slow breaths more of that, while Shinji noticed that Kaworu's heartbeat was also slower than it should be, and the angel said "Thank you, Shinji," and nuzzled at his cheek. "I promised." So he wanted to take care of Rei before he had to go, instead of leaving it until the last minute and taking up Shinji's attention until then. "I hope she'll make you happy." Kaworu pulled away and wiped his eyes on his arm when Shinji let him go, no longer half on Shinji's lap, and reached up for Rei to join him once he was seated cross-legged on the bed. "Let me do most of this: I received training in how much of a field I could generate without setting off detection equipment."

"Alright," she said, and sat facing him, her cheeks a little pink after seeing Shinji hold someone like that. She hadn't missed all the implications that Shinji was hers, or the second Rei's at least. She'd felt what she thought might be jealousy, but if Kaworu was going to die, then Shinji would be hers soon enough.

Kaworu cupped her face in his hands and she felt a sensation that was familiar somehow even before she identified it as something encroaching into her brain. Yes, that was what had happened. The angel had done that to both of them, and…

Rei found herself on a plain inside her mind (again?), and had to blink before the figure kneeling before her was replace by Kaworu instead of someone that looked just like Rei in her plug suit. "Lonely… this pain is loneliness," she remembered. "The angel wanted to become one with me because it was lonely."

"If we became one, both of us would be dead, not together with anyone," Kaworu said dismissively. Complementation was such a stupid idea, and it galled him that his birth, his life and his death might all be ruled by old men stupid enough to believe in such a thing. What did it say about him, that they could rule his fate despite all his power? Not truly seeking instrumentality was an act of defiance he'd decided on long ago, but he knew that for all they praised him as a True Successor of the White Seed, they were making other plans he knew nothing about.

After saying that, though, he bit his lip. While he hated the idea of Third Impact, if he was going to die regardless, to become one with Rei meant becoming one with the person Shinji cared for? No, it was too risky when she held Lilith's soul already. "You had better make him happy," he said instead, plea only half-hidden under threat. "I'm doing this for his sake, and my own, not yours."

"I understand," Rei told him. She knew Gendo, after all. She understood all along that all of it was for Yui, not her, as much as she'd wanted to delude herself into thinking otherwise. "But the two of us are the same now, aren't we? The way we weren't when I told you we were different."

"What do you mean?"

"What made us different was the people we'd interacted with, the memories we'd shared," she said, not just repeating herself but quoting him quoting her, the way he had when he'd told her to come with him if she wanted to remember the important things she'd forgotten. "And now you've met Shinji." She closed her eyes now, remembering Armisael's words. "I don't know if he likes me most. He goes to visit Asuka every day, and I was so jealous." It was the other angel who pointed that out to her, the angel that thought that the only way to not be alone was to be one. "I hate her a little too, so I don't blame you." For hating her, envying her when she was the one with a chance to live and be with Shinji. At least Rei valued that chance, unlike Asuka who was cruel to Shinji, treated his feelings like nothing and didn't deserve them at all.

Rei unclenched her hands when she realized they'd turned into fists. Every new recollection sparked others, neurons aligning and firing in patterns destroyed with her second body. The feelings that were so strong they'd contaminated Tabris through Armisael: did Shinji and his contrast with Gendo and Yui really make up so much of who she was, she wondered, until she remembered the Akagis, how people were shaped by those who created them.

It wasn't just her memories those feelings were linked to anymore: she remembered how Tabris had kissed Shinji on what felt like a random inspiration, figuring that breathing the air in Kaworu's lungs would work as well to keep Shinji from hyperventilating until he fainted (again) as a paper bag, and spare Kaworu the trouble of finding one.

It was only when he did it, the human contact calling up all the ways Rei felt when Shinji took her hand, that he really became aware of deeply Rei had encroached on him, in her desire to protect Shinji, for someone (even if not him) to look after him once she was gone, for someone to remember that she had loved him. It should have only disgusted him, only given him the creeps, but buried in it was the hope of an end to loneliness. A hope that someone would care for Rei herself, a hope Kaworu had never really had before any more than Rei did until she met Shinji. She'd clung to Gendo's glasses even knowing that he'd really done it for Yui because even the illusion of being cared for was so very precious.

She hadn't liked Kaworu before at all. He was like her, and she hadn't wanted to be like him. She'd refused to be doomed to be someone's tool, not anymore, and she almost had to wonder if Gendo had suspected that, if that was why he'd hesitated to allow Shinji to be sent out. Of course Gendo cared far more for Shinji's Eva than for her.

Kaworu wasn't hesitating to show her his memories, not when SEELE would be coming for them after he was gone. Not when he wanted someone to remember him.

She felt him calm and begin to trust her, begin to see her as the vessel of his hopes. It was hard not to accept those hopes when all of them were for her, or rather for Shinji's happiness with her. Hoping that Shinji would think of him when he was with Rei, that someone would remember him, whether Shinji resented Kaworu's price or was grateful for his help. It didn't matter, as long as he was remembered.

It was a little sad that he had such a modest wish and thought it was almost asking too much of a world that never cared for him.

Still, he was right when he threatened Shinji with the fact that since Kaworu's feelings were Rei's, to reject him was to reject Rei. Rei knew she acted oddly: if that alone was reason for Shinji to start hating someone? What if she did something wrong that bothered him the way so many of Kaworu's actions had? What if fear of her drove Shinji away?

So… but she had recalled as much as she was going to without sleeping on this, and Kaworu was worried about the time. Worried that they would be discovered and something would happen to undo all his work, make SEELE kill Shinji so there would once again be no one to remember him not as the twelfth angel but as _Kaworu_. A person, if not a human being.

A person who didn't want this, didn't want to end the world and die with it, not just one more enemy defeated.

His avatar in her mind looked up, noticing her sympathy and looking a little surprised. She had sympathy for him? That was hard to believe, but he hadn't even known it was possible until he'd felt Rei's awareness that Shinji cared about her existence. "You'll remember me?"

"Of course I will. You gave me back who I am." She'd been grasping at what was left of herself, but would she have recovered her own motivations in time to stop Gendo from using her? Rei wasn't sure. "But we should leave this place before Shinji worries."

Kaworu nodded, disappearing from her mind. Rei opened her eyes and a few moments later he withdrew his hands from her head.

_Caring about someone means not wanting them to die_, Rei knew. "Why do you think you can't escape them? Can't you hide?"

"This body is made out of normal matter and is practically that of an ordinary human. My soul is an angel's, but I can't shapeshift," Kaworu explained. "A human body needs to eat, sleep: I couldn't evade their pursuit forever, and I don't want to be hunted down like a mere animal."

"If you can't use those powers, then how did you encroach upon me just now?" Rei asked, puzzled.

Kaworu blinked, looking at his hands in disbelief, then laughed, shocked. "You're right: I just did it by instinct, but…" He spread his hands wide, palms up, and white tendrils spiraled up out of his flesh. "Only mostly human," he said with wicked delight, already seeing the potential of this. "I must have picked this up from Armisael. My flesh is ordinary matter, but this isn't. This is shaped out of the light of my soul. As long as I take a larger shape, something this body made of ordinary matter can be concealed in?" He experimented, wrapping the tendrils around his hands, forming more of that matter into claws. "What, though? A tree would be appropriate."

Rei shook her head. "They scan this area daily in order to create a computer model of the potential battlefield. A new tree would be noticed, especially since we are aware that angels can conceal themselves in living things." Like Evas. "Do you truly need your human body?"

"I don't want to risk it," he told her.

"Why not?"

"Would you? Didn't you hear me tell Shinji that these feelings aren't natural for angels? That's why your feelings gave me the creeps." He shuddered at the memory of lukewarm stickness pouring over him, something squeezing at his chest, squeezing tears out of him. "It can feel good," he knew now, "but what if we're only able to feel this connection to another without instrumentality because of the chemicals in the Lilim brain? Do you want to feel the same loneliness you felt in Armisael when you have a choice? What if this disgusting body they made me in by doing that to my father is the only reason I'm not drawn to Adam like all my siblings? I don't want to give them instrumentality, so I'm not going to take that risk. I already decided that even if I could abandon the human form, I wouldn't. I'm myself, not just _their _angel." While he looked like a human, he could have some hope that someone (Shinji) would look at him and see a person, not a thing.

Even if Shinji had pulled further up the side of the bed, worried at the casual way Kaworu was toying with those tendrils: he'd already put together that they were what let him connect to Rei's mind, and after finding out the full extent of what Armisael did to both Rei and Kaworu by trying to absorb them?

He also didn't like the way Kaworu was eyeing him now. It wasn't the way Kaworu had looked before he kissed Shinji the first time (he'd mostly looked annoyed because Shinji was hyperventilating, so he might faint and Kaworu would have to haul him to medical _again, _in the middle of the night). It was more like the way he'd looked afterwards, delighted that the kiss had worked and he wasn't going to have to go to any extra trouble. At first, Shinji had been a little relieved that _that _was all it was, and might have rationalized it as being something like CPR, except that Kaworu was absolutely fucking _weird_, except then Kaworu started talking about the nature of love and Shinji had realized that oh crap, the craziest of the pilots seemed to have feelings for him, which would have been worrying because _Kaworu, _and who knew what he'd take it into his head to doeven if they weren't both guys.

This was Kaworu having what he thought was a brilliant idea, and when his thought processes were absolutely insane (and alien?) in the first place, that was a very scary expression. It was one that belonged more on Dr. Akagi's face, Shinji thought.

Shinji could definitely imagine Kaworu invading his head with those without even asking first, because that was the kind of thing Kaworu would do because it seemed like a good idea at the time, but Rei frowned and put her hand on his forearm. He pouted at her for a moment, but his hands returned to normal, or as normal as he and Rei got. "Trying to survive means there's a chance they'll find me and be the ones to kill me, and I don't want to let them or their agents decide the moment of my death the way they have my life."

Looking at Shinji, Kaworu said bitterly "Third Impact is the purpose I was created for, my duty to those old men who think themselves my masters. They've controlled my entire life: only in death will I finally be free, and only if my soul is allowed to leave this world instead of being absorbed into the whole the way they want." He shifted closer to Shinji. "That's why I want you to kill me," he said, voice soft as though he was speaking of something wonderful, something for lovers. "My death is the only thing that is mine: I want you to be the one to set me free. Like the cat."

"Are you certain of that?" Rei asked. Kaworu looked at her, puzzled by her even asking that question. "We are the same, you and I. Are you certain that they don't have other vessels waiting to capture your soul, to ensure you will continue to be of use to them? The brainwashing of the dummy plug clones would have prevented me from regaining so much independent thought this quickly, according to Dr. Akagi when I awoke and she identified which of the vat clones was my new vessel. Gendo Ikari intends to act after the Twelfth Angel dies, and I know that SEELE is aware he is defiant of them since they tried to have him hand me over to them. They will have to act quickly as well. I doubt you would return to yourself in time to be able to stop them. Triggering Third Impact requires the soul of a Seed as well as their body: they would not risk the loss of Adam's soul any more than Gendo Ikari is willing to lose Lilith's."

Kaworu's hand went to his mouth, and Shinji honestly thought the other pilot (the angel?) might throw up, even his body desperate to reject such a horrible truth, or start hyperventilating and faint the way Shinji had, such was the horror in his eyes. Such was the _despair _there at the thought that there was no freedom for him from those who intended to use him, not even in death.

Rei looked at him for a moment, then decided that yes, the right thing to do was pull him towards her, let him rest against her, and Shinji was once again struck by how much like a mother she was sometimes. She'd be a good one, he was certain. Better than his, when she'd let herself be absorbed by the Eva, leaving him behind for Gendo to abandon. No, Rei would never do that, never abandon anyone. She'd proven that by dying to save Shinji from getting pulled in by the angel too, so how could Shinji not do whatever it took to bring her back to herself in return?

With Kaworu's head tucked under Rei's chin it still took the lanky pilot time to relax, lean arms clinging to her as he visibly struggled to calm down, not to faint the way Shinji had after Rei's death as much as he might welcome the bliss of a temporary oblivion when SEELE even had the power to deny him a final one.

"So they, they," Kaworu swallowed and forced himself to go on once he'd almost gotten a hold of himself. "They can even deny me death?" He laughed bitterly, eyes wild, looking crazier than Shinji had ever seen him. "There really is no escape from them. I'll never be free of their control!" Damn, damn, damn!

"SEELE will pursue you, and Gendo Ikari would never let me go, not when I am the key to regaining Yui," Rei knew. "You are the last born of Adam, aren't you? No more angels are coming, so they shouldn't need Shinji to pilot. Now, though, he knows too much for his father to let him go." Especially since Rei would go with him. "You hold Adam's soul and I hold Lilith's: they can't start Third Impact without us."

"We can't hide from them." Kaworu thought the idea was ridiculous. "The old men have people everywhere, and all they need to do is tell the world the truth, that we're both angels and hold the keys to Third Impact, and every human on the planet will be looking for us. I can raise my AT field while I'm awake, but this body can only go so long without sleep." And when abandoning this human form meant running the risk of doing exactly what they wanted him to? No. Never.

Rei slapped him, more enraged than when she'd slapped Shinji for saying he didn't trust Gendo, for voicing thoughts Rei was trying her best not to think. "You're not even going to try?" she said to his shocked face, hand reaching up to touch the mark left by her hand. "Didn't you want to defy them? To have something that was your own? If you destroy those clones, then you could die as yourself."

"If I can, but…" Kaworu's shock finally turned into that expression that should be fanged, because what did he have to lose? Absolutely nothing, not even the hope of death and freedom. They'd ordained his birth, kept him in tubes and labs, controlled his entire life: even if it was true that fighting them was ultimately futile, there were too many humans and SEELE could hide themselves, even killing a few of them would be better than nothing. At least their own deaths would force at least the ones he killed to recognize that they didn't control him. "I have my communicator, and I was trained in how to infiltrate and control electronics." In order to bypass the locks, safety features and self-destruct of Terminal Dogma. "I could…"

"We can. Gendo Ikari must know I began to turn against him because Shinji divided my loyalties: he saw me die to protect Shinji." Not Unit 01, but his unwanted son. "I need to escape too, and I won't let… _We _won't let them use Shinji. Not to get to me. To us." He shared her feelings, right? He wanted to protect Shinji too? "I remember the promise we made," she told Shinji. "To both go on living. When you let me hold your hand that fifth time, I didn't want to let go." Even though it had bothered her, made her feel queasy and uncomfortable the first few times, just like Kaworu, the angel in her not knowing what to do with this feeling.

Love confused even humans.

"You want to run away together?" Shinji asked her, hesitantly reaching out with his own hand again, as though he was afraid she wouldn't want to take it even after everything she'd said, even after everything he'd seen. "Rei… the first time I saw you, I wanted to protect you." He'd piloted the Eva to save her. Now, when Rei returned those feelings? "I don't want to watch you die again. I'll do whatever it takes," he said, and as soon as he did he could almost hear Kaworu's voice echoing, 'for _her_."

Yes, for her, because Rei was special to him, but Shinji knew what rejection felt like, and hadn't Kaworu kept his promise? So, "You too, Kaworu. You saved her when I couldn't." He'd felt so helpless, watching her follow his father around everywhere, looking at him only with annoyed disinterest. "So…"

"For her sake," Kaworu nodded, smiling wryly because he'd take what he could get. "So, do either of you have any idea how to go about the first step? They have men watching all of us, of course. Both NERV and SEELE. I could break past them," humans were so fragile in the face of angelic attack, and it would be cathartic to smash SEELE's servants, "But I don't know how to sneak. We'll need supplies if we don't want to give away where we are by stealing food." He'd always been in someone's keeping: surviving on his own in this complex human world he didn't know how to navigate had seemed impossible. "They'll be sending Evas after us too. I'm sure they'd want to start with Unit 02, so they don't have to reveal anything else."

"Asuka?" Shinji asked, startled. "But she's…" She wasn't up to piloting at all, even if she'd gone berserk and tried to strangle him that time. Then again, wasn't Unit 01 powerful when it was berserk? Even though she was just lying there, almost comatose the rest of the time, it took orderlies to get her off him and sedate her. "My father would still put her in her Eva and send her to kill me. And she hates Rei." As for Kaworu, who had piloted _her _Eva? "Will running away even work?" he asked, as much as he wanted to run away with Rei, to leave this place behind forever.

"Over the long term, no," Kaworu said, rolling over to lie on his back and look up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "They'll find us eventually: they'll definitely be determined enough. I've thought about this a lot," he said, glancing at Rei. It wasn't like he'd given up _easily_. "The best thing would be if we could destroy SEELE without the world finding out that the two of us are angels first, but there's not even a snowball's chance in hell of that. All of them are hidden: the identities of the Committee members are known, but once the first one falls the rest will go into hiding. They're afraid of death: once those old men know I'm coming for them, they'll do whatever it takes to bring us down. They need us for Instrumentality, and they won't give up on getting it: we'll have to get them before they get us, and killing humans will make the other humans see us as a threat. They definitely won't listen if we try to tell them that we're _good _angels." Yeah, no, that thought was laughable, Kaworu's grin said. "The two of us could maybe become trees somewhere and sleep for a century or so, but what about Shinji?"

"Will they believe that we care about him?" Rei wondered, her hand tightening its grip on Shinji's just slightly, afraid that he'd stop believing she liked him now that he knew what she was.

"If it's their only shot at finding us?" Of course they would. "Those old men are smart: defying them is certain death, but it seems I don't have any other choice." Not when even suicide wouldn't save him from them. "Ten years, and I haven't been able to think of any good plans, so let's not."

"We have to try," Rei insisted. Otherwise, Shinji would die along with everyone else.

"I mean let's not plan," he told her, pleased she'd fed him a straight line. "Let's just grab some food and see if we can get out of here without having to use our AT fields."

"Now?" Shinji asked, startled.

"Well, I have until noon," Kaworu reminded him. "And the closer we get to the preordained time, the more risk they'll figure out I refuse to go through with it and the more men they'll assign to tail me. After eleven hundred at the latest, there's no way we're getting out of Tokyo-3 without a pitched battle."

"And then Misato…" Shinji clenched his fists. Misato hated angels. Misato would send Asuka against them ready or not, conscious or not, if it was her only chance to kill two angels that had hidden among the pilots and kidnapped Shinji. If only there was some way to make Misato listen to them, but Shinji knew he couldn't convince her, and Rei and Kaworu definitely couldn't.

"I could destroy as much of the base as I can while the two of you go," Rei suggested. "Without the Magi," Naoko Akagi's Magi, and Ritsuko's as well, "and the AT field detection equipment, it won't be as easy for them to track us." There were imitations of the Magi, but none of them were the equal of the original system.

"We're not leaving you behind," Shinji insisted, and only Rei noticed that Kaworu looked hopeful when he heard the 'we.' "Isn't Kaworu the one they're expecting to attack the base?" Shinji didn't want them to think that Rei was a bad guy: let Kaworu do it.

"I would rather do it myself," Rei confessed. The labs here: she now almost resented that Ritsuko was the one who got to destroy the dummy plug clones, the symbols of how Rei was only a replaceable slave. What right did Dr. Akagi have to resent how Gendo treated _her_, when she'd helped him treat Rei like that? "She was just being stupid and dramatic: as long as the equipment is intact, more can be made in a few weeks. Gendo Ikari was only upset because he didn't expect Third Impact to take that long, but if they are given enough time, a vessel could be prepared to capture my soul even if it would take longer for it to be viable outside LCL."

"We have to destroy that system, then," Kaworu agreed fiercely. Knowing that it existed? That SEELE must have something like it waiting for him? He wouldn't let anyone else have their freedom taken from them, their last resort turned into a trap. "You two won't be watched as much as I am: there already isn't much chance I can get out of here without a fight."

"With the power shut down, they weren't able to use the sirens to summon the pilots," Rei recalled.

"So I'll take the power plant out first, and I can use my AT field to jam communications, too," Kaworu revealed, looking more than a little proud of himself even though Shinji didn't know enough about the theory to realize how impressive that was. "I was planning to head right to Terminal Dogma to get it over with, but I can pretend they're actually capable of getting in my way." So the battle could rage throughout the entire facility. "SEELE already me gave maps of NERV's defenses: the Magi are EMP hardened and spread throughout the geofront, but I know what I need to destroy in order to make them unsalvageable. Gendo has Adam, so I should avoid the command room, just in case." Pity.

"Will you be alright?" Shinji asked. Doing all this by himself?

"As long as I can find you afterwards. I can bend light to make myself harder to see in the sky, although it's obvious at close range and using that much power makes it easy to detect my AT field. Still, I think I could sense Rei's field anywhere now." Kaworu knew he already would be considered an enemy of humanity once SEELE realized he wasn't going to be a tame angel: the planet couldn't be any angrier at him after he crashed trillions of dollars' worth of communication and surveillance satellites than they were going to be at him for existing, attacking NERV and posing the risk of Third Impact and global destruction. In for a pound, why not go in for a handful of spare change? "What about meeting up underwater?" Under LCL, rather. "If we want to travel that way, we'll have to bring food, though." For Shinji especially. "And sleep in shifts, but we'll have to do that no matter what."

Rei looked at Shinji, feeling bad for putting him at risk, but he just wasn't safe here. Gendo would be furious with him for not killing Kaworu and for making Rei disobedient. "It's okay, Rei," he told her. "I don't want my father to order me to attack you," or who knew what Gendo would do. "I want to come with you," he said, ducking his head. "Even if I won't be much help."

"You know more about the human world than both of us put together," Kaworu said, sitting up to look at Shinji with a smile. "You know I'm always acting weird," that was why Shinji rejected him, "And Rei isn't human either. We'll need you to tell us how they might react to what we do."

"I'm not going to be very good at that," Shinji knew. Figuring people out? "But I'll do my best." He bit his lip. "Do you think we can rescue Asuka?

Rei assumed her blank mask while Kaworu's expression was the sum of hell and no. Again, Shinji thought he was the one who did weird, random, creepy things? "I thought you wanted Rei to live," Kaworu said bluntly. "Asuka will try to kill us all," and they couldn't afford that while they were on the run. Kaworu would have suggested killing her to deprive NERV of its last Eva pilot and force SEELE to reveal whatever they'd done with their dummy plug system sooner, but he knew Shinji wouldn't react well to that idea.

Eva 02's soul was closed away, blaming itself for failing Asuka. Kaworu knew it would wake up with a damaged Asuka placed inside it, but even a berserk Eva wasn't much threat to him. Rei, though, when she clearly hadn't received training in how to use her AT field?

If someone had to kill Asuka to protect Shinji, it would be Rei, although she'd try to disable the Eva without hurting the pilot.

Much.

"Didn't you offer to heal her?" Shinji pleaded. "Maybe you could keep her asleep or something until she's willing to listen?" It was clear that even Shinji didn't think that was likely to happen at all.

Kaworu considered pointing out that he hadn't even properly been repaid for fixing Rei yet: even if he let Shinji's embrace take the place of a kiss, which he was willing to do, Shinji still owed him one more favor equal to killing Kaworu. Not that Shinji knew the details or Kaworu would cash it in on something so relatively unimportant as killing someone else, even if he'd picked up Rei's active dislike of Asuka. "I could put her in a real coma. That would keep them from sending her to attack us."

Rei approved of that idea, it was clear to anyone who'd been around her long enough to begin to learn to read her.

"She really won't ever forgive you then," Shinji warned Kaworu with a look that said, 'seriously?' He almost wished he would be with Kaworu when he attacked NERV, because he really couldn't count on Kaworu not to go overboard or do something weird.

And maybe he wanted to see his father's face. Tell him that Shinji was going to take Rei far, far away from him and make sure she was safe.

* * *

Misato stared at the Section 2 agent amidst the rubble of what used to be NERV headquarters before the Fifth Child revealed himself to be the Twelfth Angel and decided he felt like making them all panic by floating around the base pulverizing entire sectors and waltzing right up to Lilith in Terminal Dogma, smirking down at her and the others that came with her in hopes they could do _something _and saying that "Don't worry, I don't want to merge with Adam _or _Lilith. I just figured that demonstrating that I _could_ and choose not to was the fastest way to prove it. And I thought that since I _am _an angel, I should send a message." He smirked, and she wanted to shoot but then she heard what he had to say. "Tell SEELE and Gendo Ikari that the Angel of Free Will is not their pawn. I fought the other angels because I live here too, and only idiots like them believe instrumentality is anything but the death of all souls on this world. If they want to bring about Third Impact, they'll need to go through me to do it. But first they'll have to _find _me." Then the disc of light a bit under his feet changed and he dropped down into what was probably a Sea of Dirac.

Well, hadn't that put the cat among the pigeons, especially since the AT field that had blacked out all NERV communications had stopped doing that right before Kaworu made his announcement.

The acting commander of NERV (since no one knew where Gendo and Fuyutsuki had gotten to, not to mention Ritsuko had also escaped and gotten her hands on a gun in the confusion) took a deep breath. "What do you mean, Rei and Shinji eloped?"

* * *

_Since manga!Shinji basically does regard Kaworu as a crazy person, they're not going to fall in love in a single morning without the kind of mind-whammy Rei inadvertently did to Kaworu involved, which obviously brings up consent issues. _

_However, Campus Apocalypse's cute kind of older brother/younger sister relationship between Kaworu and Rei where both of them basically support the other's crush on Shinji, since Kaworu knows Rei loves him and Rei recruits Kaworu to make Shinji bento, has made my Reimuse a believer in the harem ending. She likes Shinji, and more people to make Shinji happy (unless they try to hog Shinji as Asuka would) is therefore a good thing. _

_As I've said before, too, the Director's Cut basically establishes that Shinji is bi (and if anime!Kaworu wasn't oblivious to sexuality, the phrase 'My eyes are up here' would have come up during the bath conversation), so really, setting him up with someone who _won't _take him away from her is very practical. And amusing._


	2. Armisael Made Them

_We now take a brake from serious considerations of the mangaverse to bring you utter crack. I got requests for a sequel to the 'Playing With Fire' oneshot, and I was kind of surprised by this, because basically Shinji grabs Kaworu, sticks him into Lilith and the whole thing with Giant Naked Rei happens, except Shinji stays in there and has lots of sex: I thought that was pretty well established. _

_Then I figured, well, I can't really do a sequel, but despite having such a volume of fic and some good cracky authors, not to mention being a cracky SF series, Eva is surprisingly short on a lot of the traditional kinds of crackfic, or at least I haven't been able to find examples of them. _

_Anyway, I ended up settling on the obligatory sex pollen/aliens made them do it (does it count if they are aliens?) fic. Or rather it ended up hijacking the serious(ish) manga 'verse AU I was trying to write. I regret very little, but I still plan to write the serious version of the For Want Of A Nail divergence during this battle fic._

* * *

Armisael's tendrils crawled up under his skin, looking like the bulging veins he'd seen on some of the old men. He was just glad Armisael had made sure the ones she was encroaching on didn't feel any pain, otherwise that looked like it had to hurt. He could use his AT field to force her out, but now would be a bad time to reveal himself. He guessed that he was just going to have to sit back and wait. There was nothing else a human could do in this situation, with an angel infecting his Eva after she'd cut one of its feet off.

It was probably a good thing that Armisael wasn't thinking about applied Lilim biology, because after the field medicine he'd been forced to learn, Kaworu could think of a few things _he'd _do with the chemicals Lilim used as painkillers if he was Armisael. Fortunately she was probably just tapping into and hijacking the nervous system instead of messing around with opiates or the chemicals that governed human emotions.

…Kaworu realized belatedly that recreational chemistry and what an angel could do with it was a very, very stupid thing to think about when one of the others was hooked into his brain trying to find a way to make the two of them willing to become one with her and whee hugs!

* * *

"Father, send me out!" Shinji demanded again as Rei made a strange sound and Kaworu giggled, which couldn't possibly be good. Then both of them started glowing.

"Two more AT fields! Four more? It's hard to tell, they're all…" Not melding together, but… "Both the entry plugs are reading as empty!" Maya said, more bad news as Rei and Kaworu disappeared and their Evas fell to the ground. Not paralyzed, they were still moving, but…

"The angel's got them," Misato said in a way that was as good as a curse as Rei's white and Kaworu's black-purple plugsuit appeared among the coils of the angel. Except… Two blue heads? She could get a clearer view once the angel disappeared, although Misato didn't need Maya to tell her the blue pattern hadn't disappeared to verify that it wasn't dead. It was still surprisingly hard to get a headcount in that tangle of limbs. At least until the camera managed to zoom in.

Hyuga was the one to say, "Are those Evas…?" They were robots, so it couldn't be what it looked like, right? Even with the, the legs entangled and the inhuman heads trying to find some non-awkward way to, well…

There wasn't anything ambiguous about a pale pink tongue licking up Rei's cheek, although what _was _confusing was that it belonged to another Rei, who giggled happily. Rei didn't giggle, much less sound so delighted about the proximity of another human being and touch as Kaworu did the same to her, only to be somewhat pounced on by the other Rei who seemed to want to kiss at them both and rub all over the plugsuits that fit like a second skin.

Then the Evas vanished, leaving something else in their place. Ritsuko gasped and pressed her hands to flaming cheeks. She'd thought she was too old and jaded for that kind of thing, but, "Mom?!" and a redhead that looked kind of like Asuka. Naked. Wait, was that Dr. Sohryu?!

Subcommander Fuyutsuki was so shocked he spit out his coffee, more than a bit of it landing on Gendo's suit. Gendo Ikari wasn't sure if he regretted not deploying Unit 01 or not. On the one hand, naked Yui. On the other, that might result in naked Yui with people who weren't him, and neither of the Akagis were anywhere near good enough for his Yui. The twin Reis, though…

That was when one of the Reis and Kaworu decided that the plugsuits were getting in the way of more touching, and started helping the other Rei undress, since she didn't seem to know how the entire clothing concept worked.

"Deploy Unit 01," Gendo ordered, eyes narrowed.

"What?" Misato asked. Was Gendo insane? Risk their one remaining Eva?

"Deploy Unit 01 and give it a shotgun." He wasn't sure which of the ones that looked like Rei was Armisael, but both of those angels were going to get their goddamn hands off the clone that looked like his wife. Gendo had managed to resist temptation for all these years (because Yui would fucking kill him), so he wasn't going to sit here and watch some angels get some from something that looked like Yui, not after all these years of near-celibacy. The Akagis were needy business, not pleasure. Fortunately, complementation would allow Yui to see that no, he hadn't been into it at all, otherwise he might be in trouble.

"Yes, Commander," Misato acknowledged. "…Shinji? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said, blushing and desperately trying to look innocent and his hands trying not to be obviously covering something else. Why, oh why did these plugsuits have to be skintight?!

Shinji was at a loss even after he was launched, because what was he supposed to fire at? He wasn't sure which was the angel, but there was only one Rei before so it was probably one of them. How could he figure out which one, and shoot her without hitting the real Rei when he wasn't sure which hands belonged to which body, forget which body belonged to which… being? Or maybe neither of them was Rei? It wasn't very like Rei to be so, so uninhibited, but then the angel had to be messing with their minds.

He still envied Kaworu. Why did Gendo have to send him out with Rei instead of Shinji? No, no, he shouldn't want to take advantage of Rei when she was like this even if, um, she was very pretty all sprawled out like that, lying there lazily for a moment to recover and watch the other two touch, a pale hand that was probably Kaworu's stroking lazily down her stomach so she didn't feel left out even for a moment.

No, Shinji told himself, shaking his head, he had to stop the angel!

Fingers found their destination, and Rei began to move her hips slowly, languidly, savoring the feeling.

…Although did he really have to stop the angel right this second?

Shinji was too distracted to notice an emanation of the angel in the shape of Rei reaching out to ensnare his Eva, much less Misato's cries of warning until an encroaching tendril hit his bloodstream and he began to walk forward, ignoring logic and self-preservation because really, he was almost fifteen and his conscious mind hadn't even managed to get him laid once, forget helping him stop being so miserable all the damn time.

* * *

Since the two of them were male, Kaworu and then Shinji fell asleep in the nest of Armisael's tendrils first, bodies satiated but still luxuriating in the feeling of skin on skin, not needing the angel's interference to be blissed out by the combination of afterglow and oxycotin. Shinji especially had seriously needed a hug, and he wasn't going to leave such a ready supply of them. That left Rei and Armisael to enjoy themselves for a little longer before snuggling into the pile, waking Shinji and Kaworu up enough for the boys to give them a nuzzle and a sleepy kiss on the cheek before they all drifted off to sleep.

That was when the AT field that walled the rest of the base out after Shinji arrived (identified by the Magi as that of the Second Angel) fell, and Misato and her team were able to move in.

Since she wasn't fool enough to get in attack range of the angel, especially seeing what happened to Shinji, Kaworu was poked with a very long pole. It took a few tries before he blinked awake. Ish. "What?" he asked crossly, seeing a bunch of Lilim staring at him.

"Report."

Kaworu thought that they should have gotten a fairly clearish view of it, all things considered. Not that it mattered to him. "Armisael meddled with our biochemistry, and it affected her drive to merge too." He spread his senses out through the others, and "What?"

The light of the soul of the one human among them was now stronger, strong enough to be a proper angel, not just a Lilim. Kaworu didn't know who was responsible for that, but he was pleased to see that Shinji now had silver hair, like them. Lilim instinct (monkeys, of all things) made him mouth it, teeth gently tugging on translucent strands. He was even more pleased when he licked at that neck to find that under the sweat of earlier pleasure, Shinji tasted like them now. The clean scent of water and thunder. He hummed, languid and approving, and licked him again. He might have kept going until all that scent of death and frailty was removed from Shinji, but at the moment he was still sleepy and satiated, so that could wait.

Angels didn't produce offspring this way, but it was too soon to tell if either Rei or Armisael had spawned in the Lilim fashion. He doubted it, though. He and Rei were hybrids, and probably infertile because of it, Armisael had copied Rei's form and Shinji was one of them now. It was still a pity: as a Seed of Life, even a debased one, the drive to create a race was strong and it would have been a very pleasant surprise to wake up to.

Then he grimaced, and had to spit out the hairs that had gotten in his mouth. That didn't help his opinion of Lilim instinct, or Lilim in general, not that he'd formed a very good opinion of them after being raised by those old men.

Idly, he wondered if Armisael's drive to reach Adam would stay altered. Both of them shared the drive to spawn (even if that was supposed to be after passing the test of being the one to merge), and it wasn't as though the Lilim could use eighty percent of this planet. They would still be annoying about sharing it with other races, but the Lilim could suck it. With Tabris and Armisael's souls to defend their offspring until they were old enough to shield themselves, the Lilim wouldn't be able to attack while Tabris was sleeping. Not anymore.

He'd known for years that SEELE's assassins would come after him if he failed to trigger Third Impact, and it was impossible to focus on maintaining a shield when his mind was asleep. Especially in a human body like this, even angels had to sleep sometime. Killing him wasn't the worst thing they could do: Kaworu knew what they'd done to Adam while he slept. Kaworu _was _one of the things they'd done to the sleeping Seed of Life.

Yet with Armisael to guard him while he slept? Rei could come with them too: even though Lilith was barren, he wouldn't mind sharing his spawn with her.

Since Shinji was one of them now, he could join them as well. Was that the intent of whoever had transformed him? Probably Rei: Kaworu had sensed her feelings for him while they were linked by Armisael. If he deserved her opinion of him, he would be a worthy addition, and since there would already be more than one angel's offspring on this world, he wondered what Shinji's spawn would be like, even though it was a pity the child of Lilith had become a Black Seed, so his young would be closer to Lilim than _true _angels.

Ah well, they'd almost have to be an improvement over the current weak and ambitionless race of humanity that dominated this world.

Kaworu hummed again, tucking his head against Shinji's shoulder and entwining a leg with Armisael's, making himself comfortable again.

"Kaworu! Armisael? And what happened to Shinji?"

"Armisael. The Eleventh Angel." He wasn't going to point out to Misato which of the females was Armisael, not when she hated angels.

"You mean they have names?" Not just code names, but names? And who had named this one?

"Ask SEELE, they're the ones with the list. The Secret Dead Sea Scrolls name all the angels from Adam to Lilim, the first through the thirteenth." Kaworu yawned.

"You mean there are two more angels?" And someone knew this and hadn't told NERV?

"Two? There are a few billion more angels." Oh, yes, she didn't know that. "The Thirteenth Angel, Lilim, is the spawn of Lilith. You humans. Lilim will make their bid for godhood," he snorted, "after the Twelfth Angel doesn't."

"What? Explain!"

"Instrumentality is bullshit," he said succinctly. "Now go bother the Evas or something, I'm tired." He slammed up his AT field, hoping she'd have gone away by the time he went from pleasantly drowsy to fully asleep. At first he only walled out the sound of her voice and that stick of hers, but then he remembered modesty and blocked out light as well, for Rei and Shinji's sake.

Angels didn't have mates, but he was beginning to wonder if they were missing out. Temporary Lilim-style physical merges were very pleasant, and definitely superior to having his soul obliterated. A pity that Rei and Shinji had been raised among the Lilim, but hopefully they wouldn't need too much convincing to do this again.

The Magi identified the AT field that sprung up as that of the Twelfth Angel, which only confirmed Misato's suspicions.

The Eleventh, Twelfth and Second: was Shinji the only human in there? The only functional human pilot left? If he was even human anymore, now that he looked so much like the other three. Had Rei and Kaworu really been angels all along? Had Commander Ikari known that? Had the Committee for Human Instrumentality known that when they were sent Kaworu? What was this about bids for godhood?

Several dozen meters away, the three women who were what remained of the Evas were being given bathrobes and herded into a truck under guard. Commander Ikari was being handcuffed and led into a different truck.

"Clearly his judgment has been compromised, since he left the base and went into the area controlled by an angel," Subcommander Fuyutsuki had told her, a twitching eyebrow the only sign of his fury. Damn Gendo, how could he do things like that with and to sweet, innocent Yui in full view of all of NERV's cameras? "We'll have to relieve him of duty until Dr. Akagi can verify that he's mentally sound and not under the control of the angel."

Since Ritsuko's own expression could be summed up by 'I have needles, lots and lots of lovely needles,' Misato was fairly certain that wouldn't be happening anytime soon.

All that was left of the angel's… normal (for angels) form was the bed of soft-looking matter the three pilots lay on, them and whichever Rei was the angel… the Eleventh Angel. Had Gendo sent Shinji out hoping that the angel would destroy Unit 01, their one remaining functional Eva, in order to get back what looked like his wife? The other two looked like Ritsuko's and Asuka's mothers, but Misato wasn't going to trust that their loyalties were still human, not when the angel had tampered with their bodies. If they even were those people in the first place, instead of just the Evas in bodies modeled after people who worked on them.

A few minutes later the AT field disappeared, the pilots and angel along with it.

* * *

When the Magi tracked the wormhole to Misato's apartment and she and a team arrived there, the shower was running and Shinji was in the kitchen with a towel around his waist and Kaworu attached to his back. "Hi, Misato?" he said sheepishly as he kept making breakfast. His attempt to look innocent and apologetic was ruined when Kaworu reached a ticklish spot on his shoulder. "Kaworu!"

Kaworu hummed, dismissing his objections as he kept tracing Shinji's collarbone with his tongue.

"I can just take a shower when Rei and Ammy are done," Shinji reminded him. He was trying to be annoyed with Kaworu as per usual, but it wasn't working at the moment. Not when he felt this good and what Kaworu did, while weird (at least that was normal), was also good enough that Shinji wasn't going to make him stop just because the girls weren't here right now.

"This is better, isn't it?" Kaworu asked completely rhetorically, ignoring Misato and the men who came in behind her, much less the gun pointed at them.

Misato frowned at him. "Shinji, what happened?"

"Well, I woke up and I was hungry, and I accidently woke up everyone else." When his stomach growled they felt his discomfort, and since none of them wanted to leave him they all came with him. The thought still made Shinji feel warm, which was why he was making a much nicer breakfast than was really necessary.

"Haven't you noticed what it did to you?" Misato asked, hoping to get through to him.

"Oh, this?" Shinji reached up to touch his hair and smiled. "I like it. I don't look much like my father now."

He didn't. When she came in, Misato thought he was Rei or the angel at first until the bare flat chest and the Shinjiness of his expression registered. "You're all going to have to come with us," she told him, gun still raised.

"…But I haven't finished making… lunch?" It definitely wasn't breakfast, even if they had just woken up so he was preparing breakfast food. "Dinner? Yet."

"We'll bring you food back at NERV."

Shinji looked at her with an expression that was half deliberately pitiful, half asking what the hell she was thinking. But that would waste all the food Shinji was in the middle of preparing, and NERV's food was terrible! He still didn't seem at all intimidated by the gun, although Misato hadn't noticed the quick flash of 'Oh crap' there had been in his eyes when the key turned in the lock before Kaworu squeezed him. Shinji was actually so embarrassed about having sex in front of Misato and everyone that there wasn't much fear or embarrassment left over for anything else, and Misato didn't need to point a gun at him, really.

It also wouldn't work, with Kaworu here. Shinji was actually more worried for Misato than himself, because while Kaworu clearly liked him a lot now, this was the same person who had snapped that kitten's neck. Quick and painless, yes, but that also implied that he knew how to snap _human _necks (since why else would he have been taught how?) and other means of killing people without using his AT field. Shinji was just glad Kaworu didn't take the gun seriously enough to stop licking him, forget doing anything about Misato or her weapon.

It also felt good when it wasn't making him giggle. Actually, it felt good then too. Warm arms around him, guarding his back, a hand willing to rub the tension out of his shoulders… Shinji wanted to focus on finishing breakfast up quick, and then they could see if they and the girls could fit on the bed in his room.

The thought made him blush, but more with eagerness than embarrassment.

"Shinji, _you've been tampered with by an angel_." And her trigger finger was itchy, her gun wanted to waver up to point at Kaworu's head instead of the center of mass.

"But Ammy… She was just lonely. She doesn't want to cause Third Impact anymore, because then everyone would be absorbed into a single new person and she wouldn't have any friends anymore." Although were the four of them friends now, exactly? Shinji was overwhelmed with happiness that Rei loved him, and instead of thinking that Rei was being silly and Shinji obviously wasn't good enough when they saw her feelings, the other two had agreed, had welcomed him into their arms. They were even sharing the light of their souls with him: his own wasn't very strong, but the reflected light from all three of them shining on him would give him the power to protect them. Misato too, and Asuka: it was too late to save Touji, but he didn't need the Eva to fight anymore. "And Kaworu-"

"There's still SEELE and NERV," Kaworu warned him. "I don't know how they're planning to bring about Third Impact, but hopefully losing Unit 01 will set them back a bit. I don't know what Ikari's up to and SEELE obviously didn't tell me much, but it has to be significant that your Eva was made from the body of Lilith."

"Oh." Shinji sighed.

"You don't have to fight if you don't want to." Kaworu bit at his neck, just gently, to show that he didn't mind fighting. "Let us handle it."

Shinji blushed again, touched, but, "I want to help protect all of you, too."

"Worry about Rei: she's untrained and they need the soul of one of the seeds, so that means they have to come after her or me. She's the one Gendo had access to and SEELE's backup plan must involve her, since I would have been dead by that point."

"Kaworu!" Shinji scolded, finally noticing that Kaworu had slipped one of his hands much too low while Shinji was distracted. "Not while I'm cooking!" What if it burned? "The sooner I'm done, the sooner we can…" Oh, Misato was here. If Kaworu just wanted sex, "You can go in the shower too, you know."

"And leave you alone?" Of course not. "Rei and Ammy would never forgive me for letting you be neglected."

Shinji blushed happily again, but "You still haven't moved your hand."

"Mmm," Kaworu agreed, looking wicked. "Focus."

Shinji hit him with a spoon, not that hard though. Kaworu just laughed, and a moment later Shinji did too, _after _Kaworu'd raised both his hands to wrap his arms around Shinji's chest.

Misato realized how sad it was that it was actively _strange_ to see Shinji happy, that she was interpreting it as an obvious sign that he had been mentally tampered with because it just wasn't natural for him to be happy, foursome with twins or no foursome with twins.

* * *

_If Gendo ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. One way to look at Eva (in the anime's present as opposed to the backstory) is that he's spreading it around with a very big stick._

_There's one Eva fic I'm very fond of called Whisper where number one on the list of incomprehensible things about humanity is that they spend time making others miserable and plotting the end of the world when that time could instead be spent having sex. It's kind of like cake or death, except hugs plus orgasms or death. Of course, given the whole naked hugging thing one could interpret instrumentality either as the return to the womb or a species-wide eternal orgy. Everyone understanding each other perfectly in the Biblical sense. Hey, it's as described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they're ancient Biblical and apocryphal texts._


	3. Refused the Sacrifice

_By the way, in the manga Kaworu was told by SEELE that Gendo had Adam (Gendo actually _swallows _Adam in the manga): he was supposed to merge with Lilith in the first place. Love being lukewarm and pooling in his chest so he can't breathe, giving him the creeps is how Rei's love for Shinji felt to Kaworu when they were placed in him. Maybe I'm referencing certain lines from the manga too much, but they're good lines. I wasn't impressed by the early volumes of the manga, so I stopped reading when I got to the cat scene first time: I just wanted to see what happened in that scene to begin with. I wish I'd kept going: it gets much better._

_Unlike the others, this chapter is not a happy fixit. It is a 'What If?' but it's a bad ending route, as opposed to a good ending or a joke ending (Like the early Silent Hill games…). Consider yourself warned._

_As a fan, one wants to give the characters happy lives and endings (see the vast number of 'badass Shinji' fics, although that's also wish fulfillment), but as an author, sometimes one has to be a bitch. If happy endings are certain, there's no dramatic tension. Eva wouldn't be so powerful a series if it wasn't willing to be absolutely brutal to the characters._

* * *

Misato smiled grimly, flipping up the night vision goggles. The body wasn't even hidden this time: they must pressing him too hard for him to take the time. Unless he'd decided not to bother because the heat vision equipment they were using could find a quickly hidden human body.

One of the others went forward to check his pulse, but Misato wouldn't have bothered even if she wasn't busy looking around. By the temperature of the body the agent had been dead for some time. NERV's or SEELE's? It would be impossible to tell the difference without checking for ID, but Misato wasn't sure there was a difference between NERV and the group it worked for: Kaji's information proved that the Committee for Human Instrumentality was just a front for SEELE.

Which had sent them an angel disguised as a pilot.

"Snapped neck," the medic reported.

"So after the order to evacuate the district was given," Misato murmured, automatically checking her gun. Before that, he'd made at least two of them look like standard robberies. The poor refugee district of Tokyo-2, which blended into ruins of the surrounding urbanized area of Tokyo-1 was a warren. Japan's pre-Second Impact anti-gun laws and the current legislation that gave licenses only to actual Japanese citizens, as opposed to the poor refugees from other countries and even some of their own who didn't have the documents to prove they were of Japanese ethnicity meant that guns were _valuable_. Actually shooting them here was stupid, the cops would lock down the area, but no mugger with a knife was going to go after a family with a gun. Guns meant safety. So some suited, obviously prosperous, obviously _government _bastards coming down here carrying concealed were an instant target: not only were they a symbol of the governments that kept these people a permanent underclass, but they were carrying money and safety.

At first the operation to search Tokyo-2 was supposed to be conducted 'discreetly,' which was one of the stupidest things Misato had ever heard. Yes, if it was just announced it would be easy for the angel to escape, hidden among all the other panicking escapees, but what they should have done was put Tokyo-2 in lockdown right away, no one getting in or out without bloodwork. Not when they could shapeshift like that.

Not when this one could look human.

Oh, it was certain to lead to riots. Misato had served in the UN forces: she knew riots and mass chaos. Everyone would suspect everyone else of being an angel in disguise, and once people started killing anyone suspicious, they would have had to be wary of their fellow humans, too. The violence would have escalated until the damn thing – not Kaworu, not a person, not anymore – had to use its AT field and they could get a lock on it.

They weren't even sure how many of the agents they'd lost to muggings had been the angel making it look ordinary and how many were real muggings. Hell, Misato didn't even know how many agents had been lost. No one in NERV's security was talking to her, forget SEELE, and for all she knew there were UN agents like Kaji in this mess too in addition to actual troops.

An angel loose in the nation's replacement capital, though? An angel that had made it to the heart of NERV, only meters away from causing Third Impact, and then _escaped? _After destroying Units 01 and 02, of course. The damn thing wasn't stupid, and as a former pilot he knew the Eva's capabilities.

They would have had to _find _the damn thing before they could send Shinji, but it claimed it didn't want to see him again. Misato would have hauled him along no matter _what _state he was in if Shinji hadn't been arrested and hauled away somewhere immediately afterwards.

She was going to kill that boy, she thought, eyes hard.

After she killed this one.

At least most of the civilians were out of this district now. The city had _finally _been placed in lockdown, though, so all they could do was avoid the areas with soldiers. Fortunately, most of them wouldn't have survived the chaos after Second Impact if they didn't know to run away from the people with the semiautomatics and other serious hardware.

When what happened finally leaked, probably by someone at SEELE hoping they could blame and discredit NERV by claiming the pilot had been replaced by an angel while he was there, and there was no actual operations plan already being put in place, the UN panicked. Tokyo-1 had been destroyed in Second Impact, then nuked for good measure. Now Tokyo-2 had come _this close _to being N2 mine'd. Or nuked.

It still was _very_ close. If Ritsuko hadn't released the data on the Twelfth Angel's AT field strength, which proved that it was able to block subatomic particles and wouldn't even be affected by radiation, a nuking would have happened already. If they'd had a working Eva, it would also have happened already, because the angel would have needed to use its AT field to survive a blast like that. Then there would be nowhere to hide, just a large crater perfect for Eva deployment.

The millions of people who would die hadn't really factored into the decision. This was an angel. As long as it was alive they were looking at another Second Impact or far, far worse. The deaths of billions at best, and from what Kaji'd gathered most likely the extinction of the human race.

The angel turning down the chance to merge with Lilith didn't matter. The angels came to NERV because they were tricked into thinking Adam was there: they couldn't let it find its true progenitor.

So why was SEELE trying to kill it now, when before they'd practically laid out the red carpet on a path right through NERV's defenses? What difference did it make if it merged with Lilith or Adam, when both would trigger Third Impact?

Well, apparently it made a difference to both SEELE and the angel, Misato thought as the noise of shouting and gunfire erupted nearby. It was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from in this warren, but "Spread out!" she ordered, her team already doing so. She'd managed to call in some friends and favors from when she was in the UN forces, so at least she wasn't in here with 'security' more used to looking intimidating and dealing with single decisive moments instead of the chaos of a battlefield.

One of the riflemen pulled open a nearby door, intending to head for the roof and get a good vantage point, and Misato and the two still with her instead of heading along different allies to block the retreat stared, deafened.

Who the hell had set the old 'grenade pin tied to doorknob' trick? That was practically as old as grenades! Who would set something like that when there were friendlies running around they couldn't communicate with?

Unless, Misato realized, whoever set it was operating alone and didn't have any friendlies to worry about. "_Shit,_" she cursed. She'd known Kaworu was a crack shot: unlike Shinji he'd actually trained to pilot an Eva. In hindsight, it was obvious that someone must have shown him how to snap necks: that kitten would have been a bigger red flag if she wasn't drowning in a sea of them. Hell, sometimes she felt like the sanest person among the pilots and NERV command staff, and when she'd spent years voiceless practically in solitary that was _saying _something.

Evas used guns, and knives, but angels didn't _have _necks to snap. What the hell had SEELE been thinking, giving their so-called tame angel assassination training, teaching it how to kill humans?! Unless they were making sure that it could defend itself from anyone who got suspicious _without _raising its AT field and confirming those suspicions? Could silence people the way Kaji had been silenced? Wouldn't fall for a booby trap like this one?

Well, she didn't have to ask where it had gotten the grenades: the same places, or people, it was getting its guns and ammo. Probably the knife too, for that matter.

As callous as it was for it to head for a populated city, it was also smart. Kaworu could act more human than Rei at her best, and both Ritsuko and Gendo must have known all along what the Fifth Child was: it was too much like Rei to… Her fingers were trying to clench in anger: so that was what an 'itchy trigger finger' was.

They had to worry about shooting civilians in this mess, although one of the reasons Misato couldn't work with them was that SEELE's agents and/or NERV's clearly didn't. Who knew how many innocent people had already died because of confusion or unfriendly fire, in this warren? They wouldn't be able to count the bodies until it was over, and no one would want an accurate count, not when NERV, SEELE, Japan and the UN would all be trying to avoid being brought down for this, but this city was eating men alive. Urban warfare did that.

A single thing that looked like a teenager, taking weapons and supplies from the dead: was the angel treating this like a _video game? _

"Hold your fire! UN!" someone called from up ahead.

"NERV operations!" she called back.

"That you, Katsuragi?" someone else said from around the corner as Misato's companions carefully took up positions.

"Yeah."

"Thank god. Three of us, out of a full squad."

It wasn't until they rounded the corner that Misato recognized the accent: Australian. He must have been out of the country when Second Impact hit. No wonder he'd volunteered to hunt an angel, then. "Sergeant Hilbert," he told her. "We were in… Nevermind. Damn thing's been laying traps, or _someone _has. We're just lucky the power was cut to this area."

Misato's companions winced, knowing what determined electric and civil engineers could do in the way of a defense grid and Misato thanked God that, "He's not an engineer: we don't know what the hell SEELE taught him, but he just knows a few tricks. Like being able to hack open electronic locks that aren't connected to any outside network." In order to get into Central Dogma. He'd just looked at a lock that should have required more calculation capability to figure out the code than could potentially exist in the universe and it opened for him. He probably just encroached on it and made the code what he said the code was, but he hadn't touched it, either. 'The light of the soul,' huh? Ritsuko thought Misato was just going to get herself killed and she should have let the expendable people handle this because he could block out subatomic particles, but that was just putting up a block. The kind of _control _that lock implied, though? Whether it be over his abilities or the systems around him, it was the kind of worrying that was making Japan jam every possible frequency or signal in this entire area. It left them without radio, but when that would let it listen in? Or control what each side of the conversation heard?

Or who knew the hell what it could do, except possibly SEELE and had it even showed them all its tricks? When it had double-crossed them and might have planned to do so from the beginning, gone to Tokyo-3 just in order to get out from under their thumb?

It said something that their plan, SEELE's entire plan, was to keep him too busy to sleep, make him exhaust his supposedly-human body so the consequences of going without his medication (like Rei's?) happened faster. Who knew if exhausted angels made mistakes, but while he was asleep he couldn't put up his AT field and he'd be as vulnerable as a human teenager. Supposedly. A human teenager who might be able to shapeshift.

Well, that was why the night vision gear, which would have been wistful thinking if it weren't for the fact he contained a core, the angelic S2 engine, and a power source with that kind of output would produce waste heat. That was how her father found Adam: it was the power of the S2 engine they'd detected, not the angel itself.

Keep him trapped, keep him contained. If he took to the air they'd start launching N2 missiles at him, or at anywhere he landed, and send in more men. Using his AT field would give away his position, even in this jammed zone, and even if he lowered it right away that would help Ritsuko track him.

"We came this way because we heard fighting," one of her men was telling the sergeant.

"That was us and some of SEELE's goons. That information Katsuragi sent in that Kaji gathered: we've been ordered to arrest all of them we can." He frowned a little, leaning against an old brick wall. "If it was up to me I'd let them get killed by the damn angel instead of our men, but we need to know what else-"

That was when he died.

Everyone dove for cover, but one of his soldiers and two of Misato's didn't make it, and since they weren't sure where the shots were coming from Misato's last man was hit in the back as he raised his gun cautiously over the cinder-block garden wall he'd taken cover behind.

Misato somehow met the eyes of the last UNSF soldier, both of them united in their awareness of what was happening. The killer was hitting the sniper's triangle, not going for headshots or anything else unprofessional, but they were only firing one shot and Annie Oakley aside, it just wasn't humanly possible to switch between moving targets and fire that accurately and that fast. The trick shots of old Wild West Shows had practiced their routines by shooting objects at the same position with the same velocity every time, not shooting off the cuff. It _could _have been multiple enemies, but multiple professionals should have triple-tapped to be sure, since they had time to set up the shots. They hadn't missed, but they _could have _missed, and three shots would have made sure of them.

To err was human, after all.

Single shots meant someone who wasn't worried about missing, but was worried about running out of ammo and having to reload without anyone to cover them.

_I'm going to die_, Misato thought, not for the first time, when the other soldier's wide eyes became a dead man's.

She felt oddly cheated, first because she'd been so close, so damn close, just this one left and then Adam and she'd have her revenge after all this time.

Then, as the seconds ticked by, blood on her urban camo and none of it hers she felt even more cheated that she was still alive. Did it think she wasn't worth killing, when it had fooled her so easily? "Well?!" she yelled into the chaotic air, sounds of more shooting and screaming in the distance as the rioting continued, as panicked civilians rushed the barricades because before the jamming went up someone'd found out that there was an angel in here, not to mention that they planned to nuke this area if that was what it took, and there were rich gang lords in here with private armies of their own (not so different from Gendo, at that).

"You are an _idiot_," she heard Kaworu say finally. His tone was annoyed but oddly casual, at least at first, before the bitterness set in. "Spreading even a fraction of the truth about SEELE, letting them know it was you and then going somewhere they could have you shot and it would be perfectly natural. It's clear you don't care about Shinji or his feelings at all."

Misato bared her teeth, wanting to yell at him to shut up but the longer he remained talking the longer he stayed here and wasn't killing her, which meant she could kill him.

Even the angel knew it was odd of her not to respond. "You're the last of the people he cared about, and he's already lost so many he refused to care about anyone else, although it didn't help that he hated me." A note of regret, or it might even be grief slipped past the mask there, and he wondered. "I wonder what will happen to him now? Shinji's refusal surprised the old men, and Ikari." The angel's resigned tone indicated that he wished the refusal had surprised him. "They won't be pleased."

Misato finally heard rock slide on rock, just slightly, the way it did when someone stepped carefully on unstable rubble. She quietly got into position and drew her gun, watching the ramshackle shed that blocked her view of one of the alleys that led into this little makeshift urban garden.

The footsteps carefully drew closer, and Misato was still focused on them when a gun was pressed to the back of her head. "Drop the gun. If you don't, I _will _shoot," Kaworu said. "Shinji will blame me if you die in here regardless of who kills you."

"Why aren't you? You murdered the rest of them." She dropped the gun, honestly wondering why he bothered to give that order.

"Correction: I killed them. 'Murder' is unlawful killing, while this is self-defense. This is a battlefield and they were trying to kill me. I don't want to kill them, I want to live. Not that you care." His left hand was already patting her down. "I'll hold onto this," he said, removing her belt with the knife and holstered sidearm. "Until we're done."

Ah, so he had been told that humans were far more likely to try something if they had a weapon. An angel certainly wasn't going to leave her armed as a sign of good faith: he knew she hated his kind, he wouldn't trust her worth a damn.

It was too late to try to pretend to be on 'his side' or at least Shinji's: it was all she could to do hold back the hatred that was trying to push her under into a sea of red rage. Still, there was one thing he might believe. "I don't suppose your offer to let Shinji kill you is still open?"

"No. Like I said, I made that offer for my sake, not for his. I wanted him to do it because he cared about me and wanted to spare me the pain of living like this, with every man's hand raised against me, until I grew weak and constantly pained as this body fell apart," without the medications SEELE's hybrid needed to survive, "until the old men finally had me brought down. That was what would prove how he felt about me, and he would never forget taking my life. But he hates me," he said, unhappy and resigned to it, "He didn't care no matter how much I would suffer, he refused and demanded that I leave him alone. That's why I'm alive right now. And now he'd just kill me because all of you are making him: if I'm brought to him it wouldn't be his choice at all, definitely not something he'd do for my sake. Just one more thing to hate me for. So I'm going to stay in this world where I can't survive on my own, with no one to care for me or watch my back, until I die a shameful death. Like the cat would have if Shinji'd had his way. What do you think, Misato? Isn't that better revenge than killing me now, yourself? And it will be even better when you die in here and Shinji blames me while you get to rejoin Kaji." His voice was bitter, and she was sure his red eyes were cold. "And your father. Do you want me to kill you?"

"What? No!"

"Are you sure? It's amazing how many Lilim want to die. SEELE knew they were sending me to my death one way or another, either having my personality obliterated along with everyone else's in Third Impact or letting that selfish bastard kill me, and either way they believed I'd do it. I wouldn't have lasted this long if they'd made real plans instead of spending two days too shocked by the deviation from the prophecies to make any real effort to find me." The angel was clearly insulted, but was it that he felt they weren't paying enough attention to him or that they didn't think he'd do the sane thing and want to live? "Aren't you going to try to kill me? I thought you'd at least have made an effort by now. What if I told you that I'm responsible for your father dying?" he wondered.

"Are you?" she asked, because it sounded like he was considering a lie, not a confession.

"No, but I was involved. More so than my true-born siblings. I wondered if Armisael wanted to torture me, giving me Rei's feelings for that bastard? No, obliterating me when she reached our father would have been enough. She was willing to try to convince _Rei _to merge with her, but not me, when either of us and Shinji's Eva would have been enough for Third Impact," he said, or rather monologued.

Kaworu hadn't seemed like he loved to hear himself talk before, but if he-Misato vetoed the thought 'if he was human enough,' but she was still willing to listen if it kept him in one place and gave him time to make mistakes, leave her openings. She drew the line at asking leading questions like who Armisael was: probably the other angel that infected Rei's and Kaworu's Evas, that Rei blew herself up to kill. The Rei Misato knew, anyway. She might had been human enough to do that for Shinji, but the replacement was definitely an angel, less human than even Kaworu. An emotionless doll: was her inhumanity the reason for Asuka's immediate animosity towards her, even if none of them had known she was an angel?

"The Magi and Ritsuko's best estimate is that your creation set off Second Impact," she told him. "You are a damn angel, but I'm not going to blame you for being born." That would make her the ridiculous, the unfair one, just like the angels who wanted to exterminate humanity. "But you are an angel, and a traitor: your existence is a danger to the whole world." So she had every justification to do what she wanted to do.

"No," he realized, "You're not going to take pity on me, not when Shinji wouldn't. If you offered, it would be hatred, not mercy. He accepted Rei even though she was an angel, but not me."

"Shinji knew she was an angel?"

"No, but she obviously wasn't human. Her weirdness he tolerated, mine he hated. Was it just that he met her first? Or if SEELE used two X chromosomes to make me? Or was it her resemblance to his mother?" Or all of them? Kaworu seemed to despair that he'd ever had a chance. "The old men created me, you're right, and they sent me to die. Adam wouldn't want anything to do with me, when I was created by violating his sleeping body and soul. I wonder if that cat was abandoned by its mother? I thought she must have died in one of Shinji's battles, but…" Was his hand shaking, just a little, or was that feigned emotion? "Anger doesn't feel as nasty as love does. It's hot, but not a sick, feverish lukewarm feeling. Or is that my body is already starting to destroy itself. I wonder if I should give in to hate. For my own sake I should, it would feel so much better." He pressed the gun against her harder, now. "I _left_. I wasn't going to hurt anyone, but you just won't let me live, not even long enough to die in peace! You won't let me live and you won't let me die on my own terms. Your race had your chance to survive: you would have survived me if he'd been kind enough to accept that-There was already blood on his hands! You know, he knew that we're sentient, that we're of the same blood as you! And he'd kill others when… but not me, when I _asked _him. It was my last request. It would have been my choice, prophecy or no prophecy!" Who was he trying to convince?

She still heard footsteps coming towards them from the direction of the shed: if she delayed the angel enough, would someone take a shot at him? Would she have accomplished that much?

"If I can't live, why should you get to? No," he told himself. "No. The old men will kill you once I'm gone and they don't have to worry about an angel's will directing Third Impact. I'm sure that's what Ikari plans for Rei. So they'll take my revenge for me, even killing themselves. But, Shinji…" He'd die too. No, "There's nothing I can do. I can't even save myself, not for very much longer. Because of _you_." And the others like her, who feared and hated him, wouldn't let him live because he was an angel. "Tiring me out like this, dogs yapping at my heels: they could at least have sent their Evas, but why waste valuable property when they can just run me down like an animal until I can't run or fight anymore?"

"They have Evas?" They had Evas, and SEELE was sending humans to die? Just throwing away so many lives so they didn't have to reveal that they had tricks up their sleeves? Like Gendo, when Rei was an angel, and he could have dispatched her to fight Kaworu? Misato wished she was surprised that he'd let her go off to die instead.

"Yes, and a dummy system. With my combat data, my real combat data, not holding back to match the other pilots." Who didn't understand the reality of what they were doing, except for Rei, and even she didn't know much about how to use her own true abilities, much less the Eva's. "They're saving them to trigger Third Impact. Once I'm dead, all of you will follow me." He wished he could find some satisfaction in that. "And instead of stopping them, you came in here where they could silence you permanently in order to have a snowball's chance in hell of killing me, at this point." He sounded like he wished he could say he was disappointed she'd chosen her hate over her duty and humanity's future, but of course she had. When so many humans were throwing their lives away trying to kill him, and she had more reason than most to be blind with hatred.

When he put it that way? She really was failing to do her duty. To the world, to Kaji.

"What about Shinji? You're the last of the people precious to him, and you clearly don't care about him if you're willing to die and let him mourn you too, while I do, and…" And yet Shinji cared about her and not Kaworu even when Kaworu had begged Shinji to kill him, wanted just one person to care about him. In his entire life. Before the end. "I can't even get you out of here: they'd kill you to get to me and the old men and Gendo would be glad to do it." So what was he supposed to do? Why did this world keep doing this to him?

Suddenly, the gun was whipped away from her head, the angel firing a moment later.

_Shit. _"How did you do that?" How had he seen someone coming before they saw him and fired, when whoever that …was should have heard his voice?

"What you call the AT Field is the light of the soul," he told her. "You have them too, so I can sense you coming. Especially if you're calling it up in order to kill, even if unlike us you can't channel it for that." Not like the Evas. "Luckily for me, you're practically blind." He still hadn't replaced the gun against her head. "I don't know why Lilith made you so stunted, but Lilith doesn't even remember being the Rei Shinji knew, so I can't ask her what the hell she was thinking back then. It's not fair to blame her for this world when she doesn't remember," he said with a sigh. "Not that any of this is _fair_." Apparently even angelic teenagers complained about the world not being fair. "I wonder: you Lilim are the Thirteenth Angel, and it was Lilim that forced my father to produce me and set off Second Impact. Will you start killing your own kind after you've killed me, Misato? I don't mean SEELE, I mean innocent people who never hurt anyone, just because all of you are angels." Just like him.

"So now you want me to kill you?" Misato asked, carefully turning her head and inching her hand towards her gun.

"No, but now you seem to want me to make it eighty-eight that I've killed since you started hunting me." Provoking him by going for her gun when he'd told her to drop it? "I need to start moving again if I want to live." If?

She stopped reaching for the gun but still turned to face him: she at least wanted to see her killer. He was reloading one of the two handguns he carried, but if he was telling the truth he would be able to sense her making the decision to attack and use the other one. He was wearing urban camo too, probably taken from one of the soldiers once the operation started since it wouldn't have helped him blend in with the general population before then, and his slightly gray skin and pale hair just added to the effect, made him seem part of the rubble left behind by Second Impact. "I should die my hair again and hide myself in the crowd, but once you humans realized I wasn't in this area anymore someone would give the order to gun down those people to reveal me." He finished the reload and checked both guns,

She started to make an outraged objection, but he snorted and cut her off, saying, "Like the UN hasn't threatened to N2 or nuke the city if I'm not found and killed quickly enough. If they don't, some other government will." Just like Tokyo-1, after Second Impact: the memories of that time, the billions of dead civilians in the disaster and the aftermath were still fresh. Human life was still cheap, and he was right: firing into a crowd was merciful by comparison. The Japanese army might even give the order, trying to save as many civilians as possible. Once the angel died and the body was found, the others could live.

Misato's eyes narrowed. "If you cared about their survival-" He should turn himself in.

"Why should I? When no one cares about mine?" Fifteen and already so bitter. "I'd like to save you, I'd like to save Shinji, but I'd also like to live." He wasn't going to get what he wanted: she knew that, when she'd come in here personally to stop him. No, to hasten his death, when without his medications his days were already numbered. "I have some sympathy for them, since they're going to get killed because they were in the wrong place in the wrong time instead of for something they did, but no one's ever done me the courtesy. I've been alone since I was created: I shouldn't have let Armisael and Rei delude me into thinking…" Thinking it was possible? Longing for it? Asking Shinji to grant him a peaceful death? Either way, he shook his head and stood up. "I'll leave you your gun, since you're dead without it, but follow me and I'll kill you. If you give a damn about anyone but yourself, you'll try to get out of here. The other Children need you." Asuka was a wreck, Rei was going to be used for Third Impact and Shinji was probably getting roughly interrogated somewhere, since Gendo would want him held responsible for this instead of his father.

Misato hated that he was right. "They'll get you eventually," she told him, even if it wouldn't be her.

He shrugged. "I'm thinking of jumping off a building when I start to get too tired. Everyone dies: the old men are just deluding themselves into thinking otherwise. I'd rather die on my own terms then let any of you bastards claim victory over me, moral or otherwise. If only they hadn't created me in a human body, I wouldn't need to sleep the way you do and this body wouldn't be rejecting its own tissues. Of course, if my body was made out of the same matter as my siblings, I'd never have passed a physical." Ah well. "I should have taken poison when SEELE gave me the order to go find Lilith, but too late now." Someone would just shoot up his body and no one would care that he'd been dying already, by his own hand and choice. "Goodbye, Misato. See you in hell."

"…What would it take for you to let me kill you?" she asked as he stepped behind the shed.

The sound of footsteps cut off abruptly, and when he hesitantly came back into her view he was carrying a portable music player, one of the ones with recording & playback capability. Well, she noted, that was a much better trick than the old throwing pebbles to make them look the other way. He looked skittish now, like the wild animal he was. Certain he should run, but she'd guessed right and the bait she was holding out was so very tempting.

She'd known it wouldn't take much, not when all it took was hope for him to offer his death to Shinji. She met his eyes: yes, she was offering. Even if she wanted to kill him because of her hatred, she'd do what he wanted first.

"Let me fall asleep by the sea, watching the waves, and never wake up?" No, that wouldn't happen, he would never be able to leave this place alive: he knew humanity that well. "…Hold me," he said finally, voice almost cracking like that of a younger boy, even if he wasn't yet a man. "Hold me and let me pretend."

That was an odd sort of bait, Misato thought, but suddenly his white hair and oddly-innocent eyes reminded her of a story she'd heard, one operation when they were trying to trap some bandits. About an old tapestry, and hunting the unicorn.

It was a divine beast, a symbol of god, so the only way to take it down was with purity, not with all the hunters in the world. To send out a maiden, and let it rest its head in her lap.

Then kill it.

So she nodded, and tried not to let her triumph show in her eyes as he slowly walked forward, watching her with red eyes that were more frightened of her than she was of it and clearly ready to run. Misato didn't want to take the risk of standing up, so after a moment he knelt down, now watching her to see if he had permission, and sat in her lap, first tucking his head under her chin and only then letting his gun leave his hands so that he could wrap them both around her. Not tight enough to make _her _be the one to jerk back, which would have made him leave, thank goodness.

She wrapped her arms around him equally carefully, trying not to hold him like he was a scorpion but also trying not to dig in her fingernails or restrain him. She knew it was working when she heard a soft, vulnerable sound, even though it had been so long since either of her parents held her.

She knew she was somehow doing this right, or he was just that desperate, when his chest shook and he started to weep. So easily.

Maybe it helped that she was older, if Ritsuko was right and Kaworu was telling the truth when he said he'd been created by humans, with human DNA. He'd never had a mother: even Shinji had parents before they abandoned him. Gendo at least cared about Rei's survival, even if for his own twisted reasons: he'd panicked when there was that accident and she almost died, then he'd sent Shinji out to save her from the angel. From Armisael.

She doubted the old men of SEELE had felt the same way.

He'd never had a mother, or a father, and when he was finally introduced to love it was for someone else's crush and he'd been crushed, rejected so thoroughly. Not even friend-zoned: Shinji didn't even consider him a friend.

His hands were clinging now, not to her but to the back of her jacket, and since she was human it was impossible not to be moved to pity him. To reach up with one of her hands and comb it through hair that was too soft, the strands so fine it made her think of a baby penguin's down. When angels lived for billions of years, wasn't he a baby? She felt his breath hitch in his chest when she touched him willingly, and the sobs that until now had been soundless intensified, as though being touched so gently _hurt_.

When no one else ever had? When he'd gone without his entire life and now he was going to die, never finding love? Desperate enough to beg mere sympathy or the imitation of it of two people he knew hated him, her and Shinji?

She didn't have to stand it for very long before he said "Please. Please kill me now." Because he couldn't take the pain or because he wanted to die before reality set in, before she pushed him away and he had to face the fact this wasn't real, that she didn't really care about him, not any more than it took to kill him?

"With my bare hands, right?" she asked, because that was what he'd told Shinji.

He nodded, almost a spasm, and trembled when she placed her hands on the bared skin of his neck. So vulnerable, but he didn't cringe back, almost pressing forward into her hands. She wondered if he was trembling with fear, eagerness, or both.

She wondered if he had ever been touched like this before. Who would hug an angel? Unless it was absolutely necessary, like now.

The muscles at the back of his neck were so tense she was certain his shoulders were one solid knot. Days of living in constant fear would do that. To humans, anyway, but either this, at least, was real or he was a better actor than she thought.

"Please," he begged her again, truly afraid now that she would let him go, show the same cruel, uncaring mercy as Shinji. For a moment she toyed with the idea of doing that. Pushing him off her, walking away and leaving him crying where he fell, helplessly and hopelessly. Utterly abandoned. Would he even have the strength to pick up his own gun after being so devastated, or would he be easy prey for the first hunter to find him? Either way, it would be a truly shameful way for him to die. Utterly defeated. "Oh, please." Please have mercy.

"Shh," she said. "It's alright," and rubbed at the back of his neck a little, feeling how that kindness made him stiffen up more, afraid of something he'd never experienced before. "Just relax, Kaworu."

"Tabris. It's Tabris, the… angel of free will," he said, breath hitching.

"They named you that to mock you, didn't they." Damn. SEELE was responsible for Second Impact, and yet they made her idea of how to torment this angel look utterly pathetic. "Poor thing," she said, and he shuddered with the force of his reaction to those words, to the need that had him in its grip.

The closer anyone let anyone else, the more they could be hurt, she knew. She could hurt him now, she could make him suffer so much, just like Shinji, but it felt utterly redundant. His heart was already broken, he already longed for the mercy of death. Buying this false comfort with his life, and so grateful for the chance. "Just relax," she said.

He tried to obey, because she was being so kind, but he still asked, "Why are you doing this?" It felt so nice, and didn't she hate him?

"Because humans tense those muscles for self-defense, to take a blow. You want me to kill you, don't you? Like the cat?"

She could picture red eyes closing. "Oh," he breathed, and from the tape of his conversation with Shinji in his room, if angels really could feel love, she thought he loved her right now. It was taking so little. He leaned against her now, trying to be closer, shifting just a little to fit better. "It feels good, Misato…" Was she sure that wasn't a mistake? Or was it generosity that he needed to repay? Unnecessary kindness, to something like him?

"Shh," she said again, because she didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to hear anything that would interfere with her mission or make her regret killing him. Didn't want to be reminded that her excuse was flimsy, that she really was trying to comfort him. If he was weak enough to long for death, then he should die. He was an angel, so he should die. "You don't have to say anything. Just die, just like this." That was all she wanted from him.

He nodded, lifting up his head and arching his neck in offering, white marble face the image of bliss even marked with teartracks as she took his life in her hands and carefully, efficiently, ended it.

The most powerful of the angels. A boy with such a fragile heart, even more vulnerable than Shinji. Provided he was telling the truth and this was enough to kill him, but she didn't feel like cutting him open to try to find and smash a core, not here. She needed to carry the body out with her to prove that he was dead and so Ritsuko could examine him in the lab. She didn't think he was faking, though. Not when what he said about SEELE rang too true for him to need vengeance on anyone, not when he could have the satisfaction of remaining the hunted innocent (he'd killed, but surely a unicorn's sharp horn wasn't just for decoration) while humanity destroyed itself, did to itself what he had supposedly been killed to prevent.

If having him alive had actually delayed Third Impact, since they couldn't start until he was dead? Provided he hadn't just been trying to trick her, then it would be karma, wouldn't it? Humans causing Second Impact with his birth, according to the Maji's estimates, and Third by hunting him down instead of letting him live in peace, for as long as he _could _live without the pills his faux-human body required.

Even with his body limp he was still lighter than she would have thought, although once she took a good look at how thin he was…

No, Shinji had the right of it. She didn't want to feel sympathy for humanity's enemy. Even if she did, if Kaworu, Tabris deserved anything it was vengeance. Like Kaji, and on the same people.

Convenient.

She'd let him die happy, she told herself. That was more than anyone else would have done for the angel.

She needed a drink.

They could scatter his ashes on the sea when Ritsuko was done, at least. If any of them were alive to do it.

* * *

_There's a line of 'XX' angel figures, which include a female version of Tabris/Kaworu._

_When Kaworu dies in the anime, the one the viewer feels sorry for is Shinji. Whether it's viewed as a willing sacrifice for humanity's survival or some kind of evil plan, it's clear that Kaworu doesn't mind dying and it's Shinji that suffers, having to kill something pure and blameless when people who do that tend to get cursed. _

_In the manga, Shinji smiles when he kills Kaworu: it's a cruel mercy but it's mercy, and something he chooses to do. The one who's in real pain is Kaworu, who clearly doesn't want to die since that's his reason to reject instrumentality but knows he won't be allowed to survive and no one wants him to survive. It's an absolute loneliness and heartbreak that is so very NGE. _

_The manga-ka's note at the end of Vol. 11 shows how well this version of Kaworu got his sympathies, so I thought it was fair for even Misato to not be totally unmoved. _


	4. Taking It Home With Me

'_And the cherub stands before God' is another Ode to Joy line._

* * *

"This is my last request, and if you care for me at all, you'll grant it… Like the cat," Kaworu said, and smiled at the thought of dying. Of being put out of his misery, put to sleep, all those euphemisms but what he wanted Shinji to do was kill him when he floated there, not resisting. The smile was a little bitter, but that was because he doubted Shinji cared about him enough to actually do it. He hadn't intended to hurt anyone from the beginning, he'd just pretended to go after Adam to lure Shinji here so they could have this talk? That was so unfair, but it wasn't like Shinji had wanted to talk to him. Not when he kept saying such weird and disturbing things.

It made a little more sense now that he knew Kaworu was an angel. All of them took weird and disturbing forms and none of them had ever _talked _to humanity, said why they were attacking in the first place. So Shinji guessed Kaworu was the least weird angel? Not only wasn't he trying to kill everyone, he was explaining all of this to Shinji.

The kitten had been starving to death, without a mother or anyone to take care of it, Shinji remembered. Kaworu had said that no one would come to take care of it once they left, so they were the only ones who could save it, and if Shinji refused to take it with him…

That. That was it. That was what he could do to get out of this, to save this idiot who he didn't, couldn't hate.

Shinji wrapped his fingers around Kaworu now. "Like the cat. The cat was going to die because I wouldn't save it, right? But what if I saved you? Protected you?"

He'd succeeded in shocking Kaworu, breaking him out of the melancholy that had gripped him even as they came down here, smiles over the certainty of death, at the knowledge he was going to die and that was all he had to look forward to. "Shinji… You can't," Kaworu said, but his eyes were wide and almost pleading. Not for Shinji's sake, no. For Shinji to say Kaworu was wrong, or that he'd risk it anyway. "The old men… They'll crush you. There's no way you could keep me safe. Misato certainly won't let you take me home with you, not when she hates angels. Your father will send his men and then the First Child, if I protect you with my AT field. I can't survive without the medications that keep my Lilim and angel cells from attacking each other enough to kill me, there's nowhere we could run… You would just be throwing your life away."

But Kaworu _wanted _it, Shinji could see that. Just like Kaworu had wanted Shinji to say he could see him as a friend now that Kaworu was going to die soon. "Didn't I say that I didn't want to lose any more people, Kaworu? Why am I fighting, if not to protect them?" What had the world ever done for Shinji? "I tried not to let you be my friend, but you gave me a place to stay after Rei died, and I… I do care about you, Kaworu. I can't just let you die, not after watching Rei…" Shinji gulped, unable to say it.

"Shin, Shinji," Kaworu said, and raised a hand to his face before wrapping his arms around the thumb of Shinji's Eva and _clinging_. "You, you aren't just saying this so that you don't have to kill me?" Not just to get out of fulfilling Kaworu's request?

"No, I wouldn't do that. I don't hate you, especially not _that _much." Not enough to break someone's heart by tricking them and abandoning them like Gendo, and Kaworu wasn't heartless. Not if he could cry like this, not if Shinji simply not wanting him to die meant so much to him. "They're not monitoring us, right? I can't just give up. You're the one with angel powers: can't you merge with the Eva or _something_? There has to be some way for you to hide, so they can't kill you. And the medicines, there were tons just lying around Rei's apartment. If she doesn't remember before, she won't know if some went missing, or maybe you can find where Ritsuko keeps them, or…" Shinji kept talking, somewhere between embarrassed for Kaworu's sake and horrified that Kaworu was _sobbing _now, like a little kid. Like Shinji when Gendo abandoned him.

These old men: were they the ones who raised Kaworu and sent him? Did angels really have family? But Ritsuko said their DNA was human, so… he awkwardly patted Kaworu on the head with a single finger of his other hand as Kaworu leaned his head on the giant thumb he clung to, baring that neck and it would be so easy to kill him now, right? This definitely couldn't be a trick, Kaworu was too blunt. He'd come out and say weird and disturbing things all the time: this had to be real, there was no way he could pretend like this.

Shinji was terrible at dealing with people, but Kaworu was even worse.

Kaworu and Misato were all he had left, unless Asuka could regain her mind somehow or Rei her memories, but when she was in an entirely new body? Unless Ritsuko had been lying and it wasn't Rei's soul in the new one. If all the bodies there had been people, just as real as the Rei Shinji'd known, and she'd murdered them in front of him? He'd failed to protect them, too.

The new Rei followed his father around like the doll Asuka called her. If she could get better Kaworu could, right? Just like his Rei had.

Thinking of Kaworu as like Rei just made it worse. "I can't let you die. Help me think of something," Shinji asked, because he didn't know how much time they had. He saw that head turn and barely felt it, like a butterfly's kiss, but he still blushed furiously. Yes, this was definitely Kaworu and doing weird things like kissing his hand and looking so grateful, like he was happy enough he could just die even without Shinji doing anything to him. "Come on, hurry up and get inside my Eva." Like the angel that infected Touji's Eva. Even though that killed Touji, even if Kaworu was an angel, Shinji didn't want to lose anyone else! Even if he wanted to say 'Stop kissing my thumb when you're so small compared to me! Or ever!'

"I can't: that would cause Third Impact," Kaworu said regretfully, squeezing Shinji's finger. "But…" he said next, thoughtfully, "You could let me inside your body?"

Shinji restrained the urge to demand, 'What?!' because Kaworu obviously meant encroaching or whatever. "Like the last angel did with Rei? And you too. Won't it be obvious?" They'd had huge bulging veins, and so had his Eva's chainsaw when it tried to infect him too.

Kaworu shook his head, cheek nuzzling Shinji's hand, and it was impossible not to know that Kaworu wasn't just being weird, he really was in love with Shinji, somehow. Shinji didn't think he was worthy of it, and Kaworu was a _guy _even if he was an angel, but there wasn't time to argue about that. At least if Kaworu was hiding he wouldn't be able to be embarrassingly grateful? "I'll abandon this body, so they can see that I'm dead. If we can't get some of my medicine you'll have a fever, but I don't mind if your body attacks my cells." He'd survive that. Shinji wanted him to survive. Shinji wanted him to live, and amazed gratitude overwhelmed him. "Is that alright?" he asked hesitantly.

"It's fine," Shinji said, because as long as it worked? He was already putting his life on the line piloting Eva, so it was fine if he ran the risk of Ritsuko trying to cut him open to get Kaworu out, right?

At least there was a _chance _to save Kaworu, and he owed this to Rei, he owed this to Touji and Asuka, all the people he couldn't save. Even if Kaworu was obviously taking it the wrong way, Shinji thought as he felt something warm making its way up his (the Eva's) arm, Kaworu's body growing even more limp in his hand, and he was glad those eyes were closed since otherwise the empty staring would be creepy and he didn't need to be reminded of the floating Reis and how they died.

Shinji gasped when he finally felt it-Kaworu-flow into him, the encroachment reach his brain. This wasn't a lukewarm, queasy feeling like Kaworu described feeling Rei's emotions at all. This was… warm. Like basking in the sun, or sitting by the side of a fire. It felt so good he found his whole body arching, toes curling and mouth opening in a soundless cry.

This wasn't a feeling of hopeless love for someone else. This was someone else's love for _him_ that he was feeling. Kaworu really did love him, adore him, almost worship him for this, and as unworthy of it as Shinji felt because he wasn't (quite) doing this for Kaworu, it felt _so good_.

To be loved absolutely, to know that someone loved him and not have to doubt it. To _feel _it, wrapping around the core of him. So happy to bask in the light of his soul. Kaworu was so happy just to be here, with Shinji. To be welcome, and he really was welcome. While he was here, Shinji would never have to be alone again. He could feel like this _all the time_.

He _wanted _that, and Kaworu felt his want, felt that Shinji really did want him here, and the sheer happiness and relief, enough to make even Kaworu cry? Shinji felt it the moment when he fell in love with Kaworu, because how could he not love someone who loved him so much? Without any hidden motives, just because Shinji had been so kind to him now, as kind as he'd been to Rei, and he could feel how Kaworu wished to embrace him, to touch him, to adore him more and more if that was what Shinji wanted. He'd do _anything _Shinji wanted.

"_They had the power of life and death over me my entire life, and now I've given myself into your keeping. The moment of my death, my one true choice, is yours, my soul is yours and my body, every last drop of my power is yours," _Kaworu said, felt, entangled with pure gratitude and worship and happiness to be kept by someone who cared. Relief that he didn't have to fear doing weird things anymore, not when he could feel what Shinji wanted instead of being unable to understand the Lilim.

It was too, too much, too perfect and right and everything Shinji's heart had longed for, and he felt himself breathing faster and faster, about to faint again until Kaworu did something, taking control of Shinji's breathing and helping him calm down, sending a soothing feeling through his body that matched Kaworu's desire to soothe him, to reassure Shinji that Kaworu was his always, that there was no need to rejoice in this while it lasted. "_Yours_," the angel said with perfect joy like a cherub standing before the throne of God. _"Yours." My heart my soul my everything: offered onto you. "Yours, not theirs."_ He was free, truly free of SEELE. He could live, and live with someone who wanted him to live, wanted him to exist in this world. It was Shinji he would be drawn towards now, as the other angels longed to reunite with Adam or Lilith.

Kaworu was _home_, and the bliss of it was echoed in Shinji, because knowing that _he'd _made someone feel this happy? It was only as Kaworu began to settle himself in to sleep, knowing that while he was awake this feedback loop would make it impossible for Shinji to act natural that Shinji noticed that he'd crushed that fragile human-seeming body in one of his spasms and hadn't even noticed it, no more than he'd noticed falling to the ground.

Maybe he should just lie here, he thought. Make it seem like there had been something like a battle, or whatever… But no, he should go back up, get talking to them over with. He'd want to get out of this Eva, out of this plugsuit, after killing another friend.

He wouldn't lose Kaworu now, Shinji realized. As long as Kaworu stayed inside him, to kill Kaworu someone would have to go through Shinji. He wouldn't have to outlive Kaworu, not as long as he kept the angel safe in his heart. As long as Shinji lived, Kaworu would live. "_They won't detect you somehow?" _he asked Kaworu as he made his way back to the lift.

The angel, _his _angel now, stopped working on connecting into Shinji's nervous system so he'd know if Shinji was in danger fast enough to protect him long enough to say, "_No, not as long as I am within the area protected by the light of your soul." _Shinji's own Absolute Territory. "_Not unless I use my own light,_" and he wouldn't do that unless Shinji was in danger.

Shinji knew he couldn't ask Kaworu not to protect Shinji, that that was the one thing Kaworu wouldn't obey him in, because Kaworu wanted Shinji to be safe so, so much, and he didn't even try. He just tried not to have to wipe his eyes clean of tears again, because being loved like this? To have someone want him, Shinji, to live this much?

"_Not just me,_" Kaworu reminded him. "_The First Child died for you, not the world." _And Kaworu would do the same now, because he'd been wrong: it wasn't a stupid thing to do. "_You are worthy of this, Shinji. Infinitely worthy_."

The one who reached out to befriend her, the one who wanted him to live: Shinji was so kind to them both, even though they were angels, even though Rei slapped him and Kaworu disturbed him.

By the time he reached the surface Kaworu's contentment was only a purr in the back of his own mind, so he was able to be somber and listless. It did help that what happened _was _overwhelming, and it was still hard to believe that it was real, that he really could deserve this.

It didn't even occur to him that he was doing a good job pretending he was depressed when he lay in bed all day the next day, not even getting out to eat until Misato said that he really needed to and Kaworu got worried for him, afraid of losing the person who wanted him to live. Shinji wouldn't have bothered for his own sake, but now that someone wanted him to live?

It was _warm_, like a perfect bath, relaxing every muscle in his body and soothing an ache that had been there since he was born, only made worse by losing his mother, being abandoned by Gendo, Touji's death, Asuka, Rei… He couldn't care that Kaworu was male, an angel or just plain weird, not next to this.

"You protected what needed to be protected," Misato told him, and she had _no idea_. It was hard not to smile, and he wanted to laugh for the first time in a long time.

"This is what SEELE thinks instrumentality would be like,"Kaworu said in their dream as Shinji slept. "But it wouldn't be like this at all. Everyone's self would be destroyed." All their precious people would be dead. "It's true that we won't have misunderstandings anymore, since you've let me in so deeply I can feel your heart, but you can't let everyone in like this." So other people could still hurt Shinji, he could still lose them. This wasn't a solution to all life's problems the way SEELE thought.

Shinji shook his head. "I wouldn't want that anyway. Just knowing that someone can care about me like this: I won't lose hope now. I won't give up on reaching out to Rei, because I know it's possible for someone to really love me now. And even if you left and had your own body again, I'd still remember. That it's possible to be understood, that it's possible for someone to say they love me and mean it."

Kaworu ducked his head, because Shinji didn't like to see him cry. "So this is what it's like to be loved by something like you." So, so perfect, and he would have died just to defy SEELE. He would die, no, he would _live _for Shinji, for this happiness, and they both could feel it. "I haven't harmed your body at all, and it isn't rejecting me. I've managed to mimic some of your symbiotes, and your own cells."

"That's good," Shinji said, taking Kaworu's hands because it felt strange now for them not to be connected, even if they could only talk here because they were. "I don't want to hurt you, Kaworu. I know what you mean now, by saying Rei was stupid to blow herself up." He'd been unable to understand how Rei could just leave someone she loved like that, when she had a real chance at Shinji's heart.

"Would you share this with her?" Kaworu asked. "Not permanently, but once? She's the reason I knew what love was, the reason I…" The reason he had this now, the reason he was alive and with Shinji. "And I'm trying to figure out Armisael's memories of how to shapeshift: I was contaminated by her as well as Rei. That's how I knew how to enter your body. I'll make myself a female body when I leave." So it wouldn't be weird for him to want to be with Shinji, so Shinji wouldn't have a problem with them both being guys.

"I don't care about that anymore," Shinji told him. Not when he now knew this was real. "You're Kaworu. I don't care what you look like, even if you looked like one of the other angels."

Kaworu was pretty when he blushed, so overwhelmed and not bitter at all, forgetting all about the old men and thinking only of Shinji, only of now, only of being held and wanted. Of being saved.

Just knowing that Shinji could make someone this happy? It was incredible.

"It's not just that, but… anyway, there's another way it's like instrumentality too, you know," Kaworu said, managing to sound more like his usual self. "You have the power of a Seed of Life now. I did say you could have the power of my soul, remember? There's so much you could do with it, you're the most powerful being on the planet now. You won't need an Eva to crush armies. Just… keep that in mind, ok?"

"…Kaworu…" Shinji said, taking his hands away and folding his arms, because that was so far beyond suspicious.

"The old men will move now. They still want instrumentality. Then there's your father. You know whose soul is in your Eva: you might not be able to count on her, but I will always help you, Shinji." There wasn't anyone Kaworu loved but him, because no one else had ever even pretended to love Kaworu. "You aren't helpless." He had Kaworu's help. "I am the most powerful of the angels: you don't _have _to use my power," although Kaworu would like it if he did, "because Misato hates angels, but just remember that. Your wish to protect your precious people is important to me because I'm one of them. So don't hesitate." To crush anyone who tried to make Shinji unhappy by hurting Misato or Asuka. Perhaps Shinji would even crush the old men who had dared to dictate Kaworu's life? Would he do it in Kaworu's name or the world's?

Shinji felt Kaworu's eagerness, how he almost wanted to try to cajole Shinji into flying over to Germany and blowing things up, but not right now. Misato'd said they had to go to NERV and start staying there all the time tomorrow, and Kaworu himself had just admitted that it was about to start. "Tell me everything," he told Kaworu instead, taking the angel's hands again and holding his eyes. "I need to know what's really going on if I'm going to stop it. If they trigger instrumentality we'll both die." And Shinji wasn't going to let that happen, not when he now knew the real reasons to live.

Kaworu nodded. "I'll show you everything I know that would help, Shinji." For Shinji. And to crush the old men and their dreams the way they'd choked off Kaworu's. "I'm beginning to inherit Armisael's memories: that's how all the angels learned what worked and what didn't from those who came before them. So I should have more power to help you with."

* * *

"God_dammit!_" Shinji yelled, kicking one of the tanks hard enough to send it flying into a battleship. "Giving an order to kill civilians, too?" And Asuka? Rei, well, to be fair he could kind of understand Rei, since she could cause Third Impact and this Rei didn't know any better than to follow Gendo's orders, but that didn't mean he had to let it happen.

He'd fought angels all this time, and now some stupid old men were sending humans to kill his friends. "Do you know how many times I saved all your lives, you ungrateful bastards?" he demanded, lifting another tank and throwing it into the pile he was trying to create to block one of the passes that they were taking to get into the ruined Tokyo-3. There wasn't much he could do about the foot troops, but with Misato in charge the Bakelite was mostly holding them back, and as long as Shinji kept them too busy to drain the lake or fire depth charges Asuka was safe in her Eva. If things got too bad inside NERV he could send Kaworu, who had an AT field and could actually fit in there, but he could feel that Kaworu was worried that so far, this was too damn easy. Conventional troops? Against an Eva?

If they weren't trying to kill himself, Rei, Asuka and Misato Shinji would have felt very sorry for them, but they were throwing their lives away when they didn't have to, since Gendo aside, it wasn't NERV that would cause Third Impact but SEELE and… this was just so. Damn. Stupid.

He was just glad Kensuke was out of the city already. Although he could probably name all the hardware Shinji was reducing to scrap, soccer balls & a makeshift barricade in hopes they'd take the damn hint. Since Unit 01 had an S2 engine, they couldn't aim for his power cord, and with Kaworu here coaching him in how to use the AT field instead of Shinji just having to do stuff and hoped it worked the military didn't have much chance of getting lucky, although Shinji supposed they didn't know that.

It wasn't like killing Kaworu when he wasn't going to cause Third Impact and wasn't fighting back: in fact, he'd basically surrendered to Shinji before asking Shinji to kill him. These people were trying to kill everyone because they'd let themselves be yanked around by a conspiracy and used to attack people from their own country, so Shinji felt much less bad about it. It helped that he was just really pissed at having his time wasted with this sideshow, and it was better for them anyway if they were out of here as soon as possible, before SEELE deployed whatever they were doing with Kaworu clones like Rei's.

It was almost a relief to look up and see oh, it was just Evas. Kaworu had started to worry they'd actually done something clever.

"_Don't you dare get hurt,"_ Kaworu told him as the cells that currently made up his body left Shinji's Eva, heading for one of the crater lakes.

Shinji snorted. "_By these toy soldiers?"_ Kensuke might have said that this was like knights trying to fight a tank: utterly outclassed. He was just _angry_.

Suddenly, from the perspective of everyone but Shinji, the surface of one of the crater lakes erupted into a great fountain of LCl as Maya reported, "I'm detecting an AT field, pattern blue! It's…!"

Kaworu hovered there and smirked up at the descending Evas, ugly fusions between lizards and birds of prey. "Children of Adam and servants of the Lilim, obey me," he said, hijacking the military and NERV's radio frequencies because he felt like gloating.

"The Twelfth Angel!"

"Nagisa? It can't be!" Misato said, grabbing the back of Maya's chair. "Shinji killed him!"

"Evas without souls, controlled using mindless clones of me: you should have made sure I was dead, you pathetic old men!" He'd been able to control Unit 02 when it had a soul because that soul was asleep: these Evas he could merge with, gaining multiple bodies the way Israfel had come against NERV in two vessels. "The instrumentality you'd destroy your own race for is nothing but death!"

Shinji winced: Kaworu wasn't very good at getting himself across. Maybe Shinji shouldn't have killed all that time in Kaworu's room watching cheesy movies, or maybe it was SEELE that Kaworu was imitating. Badly, since he didn't know enough about humans even now.

"What kind of idiot would you have to be to think that getting your selves destroyed would make you Lilim better off, forget making yourselves immortal? Like_ hell_ I'd let Adam _or _Lilith have my soul on your say-so, damn dirty old bastards! You're no better than Ikari and his thing for making underage clones of his wife obey him! Screw you and your prophecies; you don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Kaworu declared, grinning up at the eyes in the sky like he should have fangs as the Evas he'd taken possession of circled around him. "Call me the Angel of Free Will, and you still think I'll dance to your tune? Go fuck Adam, _again_, and see if that one will believe in your bullshit!"

Kaworu did smug well, Shinji thought, like the expression on his face when he'd stopped Shinji's knife with his AT field. It would work much better if he'd shut up and just show them why they were screwed, but Shinji knew he'd like to curse out _his _old man.

Well, it seemed Kaworu realized that too, since he snapped his fingers and the Mass Production Evas took off in various directions. Bringing the Spear of Longinius back and resealing Lilith would keep them from doing anything with her, just in case. Most of the others were off to destroy the facilities that made them. And the facility where Kaworu and his clones had been kept.

One of them landed here. Not too near Shinji, but "Sending these people to kill their own kind, when Shinji and the others saved them all so many times? Using them to kill children and civilians? I won't let your pawns murder the ones I fought beside and the one I love just because you're upset Gendo wants to kill everyone _slightly differently_." Which was fucking ridiculous.

The Ikari in question was hiding behind his poker face as some of the bridge staff looked up at him, gauging their expressions. So, Katsuragi already knew something, probably because of Kaji. No matter.

"I'm not your toy, I've taken the Evas away from you and I'm going to smash the rest of your damn experiments! If you think lying down and dying is such a great idea, do it yourselves! Some of us are trying to survive here! As for you, Ikari? First, what you did is just _gross, _and second, even if swallowing what's left of Adam after the old men fucked with it makes you a Seed of Life, we're _not that kind of god_. Even if we are world-creators, your wife's idea of floating around in space eternally is _dumb_ and she is a selfish bastard who never gave a damn about you except for the fact you were desperate for someone to like you and that made you _easy_."

Gendo's fists slammed down on the table now, hard.

"Don't believe me? You should already have the nerve connections for it now: try syncing to Unit 01 yourself and see what she _really _thinks when she's not pretending to be sweet, innocent and motherly. How the hell the two of you produced Shinji I don't know: he's a selfish bastard sometimes too but at least he cares about the people around him. She doesn't love him any more than she loves you: she was just using you like you used the Akagis, and you're desperate enough to get her back you'll annihilate her soul as well as everyone else's? You're as pathetic as my old men, so afraid of death they'll kill everyone including themselves! Speaking of parents, _Kiel, _don't think I don't know whose genes were used to make me! Making a god in your image, that's even more pathetic than Ikari!" He said, shaking his fist at them as more LCL spiraled up into the air around him, turning into silver wing-spokes. "As for you military bastards, if you can't be bothered to find out what the hell is really going on before you accept orders to kill unarmed civilians and a hero like Shinji, stay out of this!" The wings began to glow, charging up. "Sleep!" Pure notes radiated from them like struck tuning forks.

Shinji's Eva protected him and the sheer mass of the Geofront protected those inside from the signal, but everyone else in range fell asleep. Fuyutsuki, one of the few people old enough to remember old-style antennae, still waited a moment before taking his fingers out of his ears. "So the Twelfth Angel took a page from that one's book…" He'd guessed correctly that it would be some kind of broadcast attack, even if it wasn't anything as elaborate as brainwaves this time. "And spent enough time observing us to understand psychological warfare," he said, not just to bolster Gendo's position but to defend Yui's honor to the other bridge staff.

"So, the pilot failed to terminate the angel," Gendo said, eyes glaring behind his yellow sunglasses.

"I didn't fail, it was a lot of work _not _to kill him." Shinji said, raising an eyebrow. "Kaworu didn't want to cause Third Impact, he just knew that when he refused SEELE would have him killed and he'd rather have me do it. I told him that was a stupid idea and he should try to figure out a way to live, especially if an ancient conspiracy would be trying to cause Third Impact next and I could use the help. Speaking of which, Father, I knew you were sick, but…"

"You'd believe an angel over your own father?" Misato asked.

Shinji leaned forward in his seat and gaped at her. "Are you _kidding?_ I'd believe _Pen Pen_ over that lying, manipulative bastard! You've spent more time with him than I have, Misato: you should know he doesn't care how many people he fucks over as long as he gets what he wants. I'm his own son, and I'm one of the people he threw away the instant he didn't need them, and then he was arrogant enough to just have me summoned to Tokyo-3 when he had a use for me! Isn't Ritsuko your best friend? And he was screwing her and her mother in order to manipulate them and those were mental images I did not need, just like the big tank full of naked mindless clones of Rei and my mom! That was just disgusting! And someone had Kaji killed, and it shouldn't have taken that long to find Asuka before she almost died! Rei was my friend, she died to save me, and that bastard just replaced her and since then he's made the new one follow him around! I don't know whether he's really doing it for Mother or he's just in it to become an angel himself, but there's one thing I don't agree with Kaworu about: I'm not surprised at all that the Prime Minister believed SEELE when they said my father was trying to cause Third Impact and they had to act fast in order to stop him! You'd have to be an _idiot _not to know he's up to something with the dummy system and everything, and knowing him, there's no way he's up to anything good!"

Nervous looks were exchanged among Maya and the rest: No one in NERV's command staff could really argue with that.

"So, father?" Shinji asked, snarling. "Want to tell us why you didn't just do what the government said and hand over the Evas and Adam when the last angel was gone? What did you need them for that was worth getting Misato, Asuka and everyone else here, everyone stupid enough to trust you killed? Worth ordering me out here to kill human beings that are just trying to stop you and your evil plans? And you guys wondered why I didn't want to pilot for this bastard! Defending humanity out of the goodness of his heart? What heart? He's been keeping everyone else in the dark all along, experimenting on Rei and letting that happen to Asuka? Why would he do all that without a reason? And what reason could there possibly be except what all this is about in the first place: Third Impact! It's not like it's hard to figure out! I understand Ritsuko going along with it because he tricked her into loving him but come on, Misato, either you've been deliberately blind this whole time or you _want _to help him finish what SEELE started by setting off Second Impact!

"As for the Committee for Human Instrumentality, did you or did you not see those Evas just now, huh? Where the hell were they when Rei died? When that angel got inside Asuka's head, and we could have _used _Evas that didn't need pilots? If I'd had _help_, I could have pinned that angel down and rescued Touji, but no, my father would rather take over the Eva while I'm trapped in here and make _me _feel what it's like to kill a friend, the sadistic bastard! Why the hell were the people who let someone like him control NERV in the first place holding out on us like this, when the human race came _that _close to being wiped out _that_ many times, unless there was something more important to the Committee than the survival of humanity! None of what has happened makes any fucking sense unless they're trying _not _to save the human race! Whose brilliant idea was it to put a kid with no idea what the hell an Eva _was_, forget how to pilot, into one? I know that people can do some really dumb things sometimes, I've done enough of them, but this?" Shinji waved at the surroundings, at the unnecessary military attack, at the Eva Kaworu left them because Kaworu actually gave a damn about the defense of NERV, at the angel SEELE sent them undercover as a pilot. "Take a look around! We've been screwed over, no, sabotaged way too damn many times! Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is my father and SEELE are _trying _to set off Third Impact the way they did Second Impact!"

In the silence after he stopped talking, Shinji's rapid, furious breaths were the only sound in NERV's command chamber.

"Shinji, you're hyperventilating again," Kaworu said, alarmed.

Shinji clasped his hands over his mouth to restrict the amount of oxygen he could get so he didn't faint again, since the alternative was probably Kaworu getting in here somehow to kiss him since it would take too long to find a bag, and he didn't need to have to deal with everyone seeing that right now, too. Sheer fury made it hard to calm down: his body wanted the extra oxygen to fuel _crushing them all with his bare hands! _

Once he could speak again, much less maintain some semblance of calm, he said, "If any of you in there care about _what we've been fighting for all this time_, you will shoot that bastard right now, before Kaworu's the only one that can handle him. Evas can fight angels, but an ordinary angel isn't strong enough to kill a Seed of Life, and that's what he's turning into."

Silence in the control room, as Maya stared down at her hands, at the gun she didn't want, at the way they shook and the way the gun was slowly lifting up, because _Ritsuko…_

As she watched herself in horrified amazement, conscious mind shoved back as some long-repressed, animal part of herself fought for enough control to destroy the one who did that to Ritsuko, Misato turned and fired.

Gendo only smirked. "Too late, boy," he said, reaching for his chest and taking out the bullet that had lodged there in the cloth, managing to push in a little ways but not enough to break the skin. "You've always been useless. If the Last Messenger has the power to fight me now that I have Adam's power, that means _he's _a Seed, and _that_ means I don't need Lilith's broken heart. If I'd known that, I'd never have bothered with Rei. But now I do." Thanks to Shinji's pathetic attempts to stop him. "So that's how youwere able to stop him from merging with Lilith: he wasn't even trying. I should have known_ you_ wouldn't be able to break through an AT field like that without Yui taking over and doing it herself."

Kaworu smirked, dismissing the wing framework. "The true nature of the AT field is the light of the soul, and I have it on good authority that you're soulless as well as brainless, stupid old man. You may be turning into a copy of Adam's body, but your soul is a Lilim's soul: humans are just ordinary angels, _not _Seeds. Insulting Shinji, when he's worth a hundred of you? No, a hundred times nothing is still nothing. You're not Kiel, but I'm going to enjoy this." Because Shinji would enjoy seeing someone beat the crap out of Gendo. "Come, try to take me, you pathetic excuse for a human! I'll make you regret everything you've ever said about Shinji!" He grinned with psychotic delight that would have worried Shinji before (oh crap, he's going to do something weird again) but now it was, well, kind of nice. That someone wanted to hurt Gendo on Shinji's behalf? No, that was more than just _kind of _nice.

…Waaait. The way Kaworu had been talking about it? Seeds and trees and if angels were related to people, then _people _merging together… which then produced a new world full of offspring… And what would drive the angels to fight the Evas in order to merge with Adam? Shinji's eyes widened as he had a horrible thought. Why did that evil bastard Gendo keep doing this to him? "I did not need that mental image… You'd better not lose, Kaworu!"

"True, a Child of the Black Seed normally wouldn't be able to subdue a White Seed, but you're barely an infant and you're contaminated with the blood of the Black Seed," Gendo reminded Kaworu, smirking and ignoring Shinji. "I don't need a powerful soul, not when I'll have yours!"

Shinji hid his face in his hands and groaned. "You mean this whole time… Like deer?" Like bucks in spring, like the way Asuka kept trying to provoke him and Touji? "Seriously?" As Gendo blasted through the roof of NERV, not caring about the injuries he caused or the direct path to the command center he was leaving the invading soldiers, Shinji said "And he was going to go after _Rei _instead?" and shuddered. "That's just _sick. _I don't care if the other angels were Adam's children and they were trying to… 'reach' Adam, that's just _wrong_." _Ew. _Ew ew _ew_. Shinji couldn't help shuddering again. "Misato, where's Rei?" He started running back towards the Geofront. "Get her out here!"

"Why?" Misato said, coughing as Hyuga came out from under his desk where he'd taken shelter.

"Because he might change his mind and go after Rei again if he doesn't have enough power to beat Kaworu and force him to merge on his own! And this Rei doesn't know what he's really like yet: she'd probably let him do _that _to her!" Shinji had to protect Rei! According to Ritsuko she might not remember loving him, but she still had the same soul, and he couldn't just let Gendo do what he wanted with her! Not when they'd promised to survive! "I can't use the Eva to protect her when she's inside the building! Help me bring her into my entry plug!"

Misato blinked, then blanched. "Wait, are you saying…" That merging and causing Third Impact was the angels trying to mate, and Gendo was trying to do that to Kaworu now to get his power?

"That's why Kaworu didn't know why the others would even _want _to merge with Adam when it means they'll lose who they are: my father just said he's not old enough yet!" And thank goodness, because Shinji didn't want either him or Kaworu to die even if it might be the angel version of sex. "Humans have AT fields too, that's why my mother's soul can generate one inside the Eva! We just use them to protect our minds, but humans are angels: we come from Lilith, right? Adam and Lilith are Seeds, and all the other angels were drawn to them, so what else could it be?"

"Two sets of genes combining into one." Ritsuko's lips twisted, bitter and angry. "The term for seeding other planets with life is panspermia, after all, but if the sperm and ova have to be _sentient _in order to generate the necessary AT fields, merging means they would no longer be what or who they were before, just a unified entity. That's why there aren't any angels of Lilith except for us: there was a victor, and that's what fertilized the Black Seed." Intelligent. Create various offspring, and whichever was best suited to the new world would merge with the seed, creating the new species.

"Kaworu said his old men were talking how Lilith wants to bear the Black Fruit, and that was what Yui Ikari wanted, for everyone's minds to merge and send out another Black Seed with all the knowledge of everyone alive. They're also called Seeds of Wisdom. I guess the Seeds of Life try to create more powerful life forms?" Shinji shrugged. "But they have to be cross-fertile, if SEELE could create Kaworu. He's half human, well, our kind of human I mean." Although was it really as simple as the pea plants and all that stuff in science class? "Wait, if Lilith is still the seed, and we're Lilith's angels, then it's the human that merges with Lilith that creates the Black Fruit? So Mother was trying to do the same thing as the an-as all the other angels?"

But if the Seeds were so much more powerful than the rest of the angels, and normally it would be the Seeds who fought the angels (since Adam's angels hadn't fought each other and normally there would only be one set of angels on a planet), then didn't they let the angel merge if they were strong enough to be worthy instead of just if they could beat the Seed? Or was it possible for the angel to win if they were smart enough?

Gendo was a bastard, but he was good at manipulating people, and if Kaworu had been desperate enough to decide he loved Shinji? No, he only liked Shinji because of Rei, right? And Rei had liked Gendo.

What if instinct or something overrode good taste, or Kaworu had a weird moment and let Gendo… _urgh_. The thought was disgusting.

Kaworu had better win, because Shinji didn't want to be one with _Gendo._ Really didn't want.

Shinji ended up crouching over NERV headquarters, trying to shield it from the explosions as Gendo and Kaworu fought, until one of the Evas Kaworu controlled got back with the lance. Then Gendo started running, Kaworu chasing him as well as the Eva so that Gendo wouldn't be able to outwit the Eva and take the lance.

Kaworu looked extremely pleased with himself when they got back, Gendo's mutating body speared like a cancerous fish, frozen in the process of transforming into something that probably looked more like Lilith's marshmallow-like body. He already looked grossly fat, and Shinji hoped those weren't supposed to be breasts, but when the angels came from Adam, wasn't Adam the same gender of Lilith? Since the DNA of angels could be sequenced, like the sample Ritsuko got from that one angel, wouldn't both the Seeds show X chromosomes?

So _was _Kaworu really female, human form aside? It wasn't that Shinji _really_ cared, but still, that would be good to know.

Maybe Ritsuko would want to look at his genes anyway, since he was an angel? And Shinji could just ask in a 'by the way…' kind of way?

That was when he noticed that Kaworu was looking pleased with himself in an 'I have done well and have earned praise' sort of way, which meant that Kaworu might do something weird again unless Shinji did something first. Like at least give him a hug, or something, even if they were in public. Shinji definitely didn't want to be like Gendo.

And… how pathetic would he have to be, to start withdrawing from Kaworu as soon as he couldn't read Kaworu's mind anymore? He knew what Kaworu was like: he didn't have to be afraid of him, even if he _was _weird. It would be wrong to act like they weren't even friends when they were… Was there even a word?

"Shinji, what are you doing?" Misato asked as he ejected the entry plug so he could get out, once Kaworu's Eva had lowered Gendo and the lance onto the waiting truck so he could be put into some kind of containment.

"He's still Kaworu, Misato." Then Shinji remembered what his opinion of Kaworu used to be, so he added. "He's not really a bad guy." Now that Shinji knew him.

Red eyes lit up once Kaworu saw that Shinji had gotten out onto his Eva's shoulder and was waving at him. The angel landed next to him, and knowing that he was young by angel standards, well, it explained a lot. He probably hadn't spent a lot of time living as a human either, as opposed to being in a tank like the Reis. Shinji should probably show him around and teach Kaworu not to be weird, otherwise he'd keep doing weird stuff and it would be Shinji's fault.

Kaworu returned the embrace when Shinji hugged him, saying, "I already miss being inside you."

…Doing weird stuff like saying stuff like that.

"Being inside Ikari-kun?" Rei asked, since she'd followed Shinji out of the entry plug.

Kaworu nodded. "He let me hide there." Even though Shinji had been so unwilling to let him close before. "It felt amazing."

Shinji winced, because Kaworu had made it sound non-weird, well, if you knew that angels could do that, until he added the other part.

"You should try it: Shinji said you could," Kaworu said, taking her hands now. "You're the one who made me feel these things for Shinji, so I owe you."

"I don't remember," Rei reminded him.

"I'll show you," Kaworu said, putting his hands on either side of her head and then kissing her.

Shinji sputtered, because wait, what and dammit, Kaworu! Then he wondered who wasn't allowed to kiss who, exactly who Shinji had just gotten territorial over. Wait, maybe it was reasonable of him to not want them to touch each other. "You aren't going to merge or anything, are you?" Because if Rei was (sort of) Lilith?

Two pairs of red eyes blinked at him as they turned to face him, Kaworu not removing his hands. "No," he said as though it was a stupid question. "If every time angels touched they merged like that, I wouldn't be able to touch you." And that would suck.

"Loneliness is a very painful thing," Rei said in agreement. "Shinji-kun, I want to be inside you as well."

And now Kaworu was making _Rei _do it? And why were tentacles growing from Rei's palms as she reached towards him? At least they didn't have Reis at the ends like Armisael's, but Shinji still couldn't do anything but back away slowly.

* * *

_If Armisael can have tentacle-Reis, Rei can grow tentacles. She is an angel, after all. They're more properly mental tendrils for nervous system connection, but whatever. _

_Mostly the character of Titus Pullo in _Rome_ annoyed the hell out of me because he's that Adam Sandler character type (dumb wish-fulfillment Gary Stu as though dumb is a good thing to be), but he was right about how the heads of one's beloved's enemies are a great courting gift. So very thoughtful indeed, heh. _

_In the End of Eva movies, Shinji decided to return to life despite the fact that it is pain because of what Rei and Kaworu represent to him: the knowledge that it is possible for people to grow to understand each other and 'the words I love you.' Understanding Kaworu now via neural link when before he was the most incomprehensible person would prove the first, and now Shinji knows what it's really like to be loved. So no, I don't think he'd be desperate to keep Kaworu within him, and I do think it would give him a great strength to defy fate. _

_Manga Kaworu with actual inner peace starts to act a bit more like the anime version, but I tried to keep it from going too far. Then he started acting like a teenager, so I figure it works out._


	5. Not as Expected

_What happens in this chapter is definitely molestation/sexual harassment, even though Kaworu is unaware of the sexual part. He's still very aware that what he is doing is a violation of Shinji's body and knowledge that he controls his own body. _

_Shinji, on the other hand, has seen too much porn with the whole 'initially unwilling person ends up really liking it' scenario._

_The manga chapter after Kaworu's death has Shinji admit that he actually did wind up liking and being attracted to Kaworu, while earlier chapters have him claim that "Guys don't like guys" and clearly establish that he regards homosexual desire as taboo. So if placed within a scenario where according to hentai, he is actually allowed to have the sex he wants but is socially obligated to claim that he doesn't, he would feel quite cheated if no actual orgasms were forthcoming. "This is all your fault. Now that this is established, break out the tentacles and start pleasuring me in multiple ways until it feels so good I can't help enthusiastically having sex with you for hours- What do you mean, you have no idea what I'm talking about?' Yeah, sorry Shinji, if you were in that kind of genre you'd have scored with Rei and Asuka by now, not to mention Misato._

_After playing Mana Khemia and dealing with Anna, 'please take responsibility' will never stop being funny. There's part of the descriptions of Lilith and Adam that made me think of Okami. Lilith, mother of us all…_

_Manga!Kaworu is a pretty, desperate young godling when tortured, which may be part of why Sadamoto does it on so many levels. When in canon his only hope is death and then thanks to the clones _even death won't let him escape SEELE_, I can be incredibly evil and still have it count as a fixit due to being less nasty than canon._

* * *

Kaworu's hand was fisted in his shirt. Shinji's hand hovered over Kaworu's wrist, but wasn't even bothering to touch him, let alone try to remove him.

Shinji wasn't willing to be his friend: he'd said that before, but this was now, when Kaworu had these feelings inflicted on him and Shinji had lost everyone else except Misato, who he could hardly bear to talk to.

Armisael's attack was days ago, and now the old men demanded to speak with him today. Tabris knew he was running out of time, and Shinji wouldn't even _look _at him.

Anger and desperation had Tabris in their grip along with that sickening, torturous feeling known as love, and he was this close to just letting go of Shinji and leaving, utterly defeated. Knowing he had no chance of getting what Armisael had made him want. Just walking away.

Except he would be walking to his meeting with the old men, another step on the path the Lilim had ordained, cruel and uncaring, just like Shinji. And if he couldn't do anything to them, if Armisael and Rei were too dead to take this out on, Shinji was right here.

If he'd thought it over he would have refrained: he had spent all his life being controlled, so the thought of doing it to another was repugnant. He knew just how terrible it was. Yet in that moment he was hopeless, and furious, and why not? He hadn't used his powers to keep Armisael out of him because he was afraid of blowing his cover then, being forced to attack and die sooner than he had to, but what was the point when his sister had made his last days even more unpleasant?

Why not give this Lilim a taste of what it was to be kept floating in a tube, unable to have any control over the world around him, even his own body and fate?

Extensions of himself like the ones Armisael sent into him punched through the fabric of Shinji's shirt, crawled up under Shinji's skin like bulging veins and Kaworu was far too upset to remember to keep Shinji from actually feeling the penetration. The pilot's eyes widened, alarmed, finally _looking _at Kaworu and having the arrogance to want his _help_, _again, _after utterly ignoring Kaworu's own wishes.

Kaworu still made it stop hurting when he reached the brain. A moment after he paralyzed Shinji, taking control of the Lilim's body for himself and sinking those extensions further into him, so they weren't apparent on the surface. Kaworu, Tabris, was an angel: he could be in multiple places at once, like Israfel, if he made the effort. Now he could make Shinji dance like a fellow puppet.

Now he could make Shinji kiss him back.

For now, all he did was let go, making Shinji's body sit down. "I have to talk to the old men. Just wait here for now."

"You seem pleased," Keel said in greeting. Yes, that was the proper attitude for the angel to have when the Promised Day had arrived, now wasn't it?

Kaworu's smile only deepened, because the old men had no idea.

He took Shinji's hand as he made the other pilot walk home with him. It wasn't necessary to do that in order to make Shinji's body keep up walking alongside him, but one of the things love caused was the desire to touch. If Shinji still had his aversion to human contact, Kaworu told himself, he didn't care. It was stupid and Shinji was stupid (perhaps the Asuka he'd replaced as Unit 02's pilot had the right of it) and "This is my last day on earth, so I'm going to do what I want."

* * *

Shinji had honestly expected Kaworu to give up and go away in the face of Shinji's refusal to be his friend. Hitting him or hurting him was something Asuka would do. It was almost a triumph to be able to say no and have it work, when his father and Misato demanded that he pilot the Eva and what Shinji wanted had nothing to do with anything. He'd wanted Rei to live, he'd cried out for his father to send him out to help her, and look what happened.

Yes, there'd been desperation in Kaworu's eyes after the first time Shinji said that no, he still refused to care about him, but Shinji hadn't cared enough to push him away this time, or thought that he needed to fight him off, not when Kaworu had let him go after kissing him that time. Kaworu was _freaky_, but he wasn't dangerous unless you were better off dead.

Shinji really wouldn't have cared if someone killed him after failing to protect Rei, so…

So he really hadn't expected to feel tentacles stabbing into him, to find himself unable to scream or to be lowered down to the ground to sit there paralyzed with nothing to do but panic as Kaworu stood out in the lake on a statue for some reason. Had Rei failed to kill the angel because it was inside Kaworu as well as inside her and her Eva? He wanted revenge for Rei, for _his _Rei, but he couldn't move or warn anyone. When the angel already had him and Kaworu, who was going to kill it? There was the replacement Rei, but Unit 02 would have to be reset or something in order for her to pilot it, so was Shinji in the angel's clutches until then?

He wasn't expecting an angel to make them walk home holding hands like they were… not friends, guys didn't do that sort of thing. When Shinji could see his face out of eyes he couldn't control, Kaworu looked hurt and defiant, but he would smile a bit when his eyes lowered to their joined hands. It was when he said "This is my last day on earth, so I'm going to do what I want," that Shinji realized maybe this really was Kaworu.

Kaworu being an angel, well, that wasn't good, but being at Kaworu's mercy when Kaworu was going to do whatever he wanted to Shinji? When Kaworu did weird stuff like get right up in Shinji's face while they were _naked _and kiss him and now they were walking home holding hands like they were boyfriend and girlfriend?

That was when Shinji began to feel genuinely afraid, to try to struggle desperately against whatever was keeping him from control over his body. It almost made it worse that he couldn't find anything to struggle against: when he tried to move his arm nothing happened, there wasn't some oppressive force that he could try to fight off. He was just cut off, only a spectator in his body.

Like he'd watched and felt what the Eva did when the dummy plug (when one of Rei's clones, no, his father) killed Touji.

He should have felt sick, scared and wrong enough to want to throw up, but his emotions weren't affecting his body either. His body felt fine even as his mind flailed, seeing and feeling everything but unable to affect his own body, forget the outside world.

As they got closer and closer to Kaworu's room Shinji grew more and more terrified, wishing the angel would head for Central Dogma instead. No, this meant that it really might be Kaworu in charge, and Kaworu would take off Shinji's clothing and do this and that to him like Shinji was a girl…

Except when he had Shinji stand in the middle of the room once the door closed behind them, it wasn't to make Shinji strip or get down on his knees, it was to have Shinji put his arms around Kaworu as Kaworu hugged him back. Kaworu did kiss him, but it was almost more nuzzling his lips, then sliding his cheek against Shinji's before settling his chin on Shinji's shoulder, just as Shinji's was on Kaworu's. It was… oddly soft, and gentle, for someone who had snapped a kitten's neck.

Kaworu sighed slowly, contentedly, as Shinji's hands were run down his back. "You must hate me so much for doing this to you, but that works out well, doesn't it?"Not explaining those words, he decided to have Shinji go "On the bed." It was Shinji's body that took Kaworu's hand, that lay down first and pulled Kaworu down to lie next to him. Shinji could see a little frown on Kaworu's face as he tried to figure out how they could lie on their sides with their arms wrapped around each other without their arms getting squished.

"There," he said, when they were arranged to his satisfaction, lying on rumpled white sheets. Shinji couldn't help thinking of the messy ruin that was Rei's room, even though Kaworu's had been much neater before… Before Shinji started staying there after Rei's death. The magazine Kaworu was reading when Shinji left for what he'd thought would be the final time was still lying on the ground.

If this was some sort of sign of how Kaworu's mind had decayed when he was weird enough when he arrived, Shinji should be feeling even more fear, not wondering if he was responsible for this. He didn't want to feel pity or empathy for anyone else, that was why he'd rejected Kaworu. He didn't want to lose any more people, and hadn't Kaworu said this was his last day on earth?

As he thought Kaworu started leaning into him, more than just a little. "Mmm… You're warm. I don't understand why you didn't want to do this before when you were the upset one: it's making me feel so much better, although you're probably terrified right now. You must hate me so much… I wonder if you'll have nightmares, although you already do. Will you be unable to forget me, just like her?" A hand reached up to stroke Shinji's hair, first running fingers through the strands and then scratching gently at his scalp. "The First Child _was _a fool to die like that." It was unfair of Shinji to attack him for telling the truth. "She locked Armisael inside with the Eva's AT field, but she had her own AT field too: she could have protected herself and survived the explosion. If she'd lived, she could have had this with you. You loved her, didn't you? So she could have had this even before then. Had you in her bed without you staying on your half and calling her weird when she touched you to make you feel better."

To Kaworu it was Shinji who was weird, although less disturbing and more fucking annoying.

That hand kept caressing his head, a slow rhythm. "And you were willing to touch her to make her feel better, and she didn't take advantage of it every moment that she could. She was a _fool_, and something like you still loved something like her." How strange. "But there's no more time to try to make you love me back. The old men will hunt me down if I don't go today." Kaworu's voice was bitter now. "I should think about how I want to die. What do you think, Shinji? You know I'm an angel and you must hate me for doing this to you. Making you unable to move while I _do _things to you, treating you like a thing instead of a person, one that I can use just because I have power… I'm acting like the old men." Kaworu sighed. "You must hate me."

Kaworu was an angel? Kaworu really was an angel?

And Rei had an AT field? What, what was all of this? Being trapped like this, not knowing what was happening, being made to do things: was it really different from before? Wasn't it the nature of his life as an Eva pilot?

"At least a bed is much nicer than being stuck in a tube. And I haven't taken your clothes off, since it bothers you that much," which Kaworu felt was very generous of him. "I don't understand you humans. The old man made me be naked all the time: it was supposed to be purer, a better way to be, but then you think that nakedness is bad. Of course, the old men could have been lying to me." Kaworu wouldn't be surprised. "They want to force me to do things, like go to Lilith… Perhaps I was just lucky I didn't know that was something I should be ashamed of. But you're warm, Shinji. I want to feel your skin more. Feel close to you, but I don't want to be like the old men. Even if I'm already using you for what I want even though you must hate it." Like Kaworu hated it, and them. "Yes: I want to kill them, even if I won't be able to, so you must want to kill me." Kaworu nuzzled at his cheek. "By the shore. Like my human name. Or how my name seems." He sighed, warm breath ghosting across Shinji's ear. "Kaworu Nagisa… It's nothing but code for the Final Messenger. The other name they gave me is in their stupid prophecies: Tabris. That one's even more of a joke: Free Will? When my only freedom from _them _will be death?"

This time Shinji was glad he couldn't feel nauseous, remembering the big aquarium full of naked Reis. And his father had let them be kept like that? Had he gone down there and looked at them like that? If Kaworu had been made by some 'old men' and they'd made him be naked even when he was awake and aware (although what about Rei's clones? They were scared when they were dying, so had they been people?), then what else had they done to him?

Was that how Kaworu had gotten the idea that it was normal to be that close to other guys while naked? Or to kiss other guys, the way he'd kissed Shinji that time? All the things that had disturbed Shinji? How he knew what a kiss was in the first place, if he was an angel? Or had he just learned it from the magazines and the TV in here?

What had Shinji's father done to Rei? How much of how weird Rei had been at the start was Rei and how much was Shinji's father's fault? How much of Kaworu's weirdness was that he was an angel and how much was that… _urgh_.

Kaworu was pretty for a guy, too. If someone was interested in that sort of thing. And they weren't afraid of what he could do because he was an angel if they were making him do stuff like strip naked all the time. Or would they want to do things to Kaworu more because if that, if they were talking about 'purity' and…

The other boy was nuzzling his cheek again, seemingly more just to feel skin on skin than any other reason, and Shinji wondered if this was what it was like to be a stuffed animal.

"I like beds, they're soft. And warm water. You're warm." Such weird things to say, but at least Kaworu sounded more content than speculative. Definitely not lustful, thank god. "It would waste time to carry a futon out to the shore, though it might be nice to feel the wind and the sun where I'm not feeling you. Human contact is very nice, isn't it…" Shinji was snuggled again, and then his own hand was grooming Kaworu's hair, running nails along his scalp the way Kaworu'd touched him. "Oh, that _is _nice." Kaworu stopped moving everything but Shinji's hand. "Humans are so stupid not to do this more…" He hummed softly, and Shinji realized that if Kaworu was a cat like the one he'd killed he'd be purring.

Eventually Shinji started scratching Kaworu's back instead, or Kaworu used him as a back scratcher, and then rubbing while Kaworu made more moany sounds that would turn _anyone _on, so it definitely wasn't Shinji's fault. It terrified him when he felt his body react, because at first he'd thought it was Kaworu making him do it instead of the fact that Kaworu was lying against him and making sounds like a girl and… Well, anyway, it was a relief that Kaworu didn't even seem to notice Shinji's reaction. Well, he must _notice_, since Kaworu was pressed up against him, but Kaworu wasn't hard and he didn't say anything about Shinji being hard instead of making his usual weird comments or using it as an excuse to strip Shinji naked and do more stuff to him. Did he even know what it meant?

Which Shinji didn't want him to! Even if Kaworu was moaning and pressing his entire body including his hips against Shinji and they'd been lying like this for _hours _just touching and cuddlingand it was getting really uncomfortable. Was this some kind of torture to get Shinji to want Kaworu to move? To want Kaworu to do more than just contentedly kiss or lick at him every so often, or whisper how good this felt in Shinji's ear when clearly it didn't feel _that _kind of good to Kaworu.

Shinji had gone from insisting that boys weren't into boys and Kaworu shouldn't love him and shouldn't act like it or do weird stuff to telling himself that it definitely wasn't his fault he was reacting when someone was rubbing against him and was Kaworu a eunuch or something? Or was it an angel thing that he still wasn't hard even though he was moaning softly and kissing Shinji with tongue sometimes, exploring and inviting Shinji to do the same except he couldn't _move_.

It wasn't that he _wanted _Kaworu to start groping him, or to read his thoughts and at least get Shinji off so he didn't suffer like this while Kaworu just cuddled like some _girl. _He'd kidnapped Shinji and had him at his mercy, and this was all he was going to do?

Shinji wanted to groan when he realized how messed-up it was that he was starting to feel cheated instead of relieved. Did Kaworu even know what sex was? He'd asked if love was wanting to touch, kiss and… caring if the other person died, when Kaworu thought he was going to die today.

No, if the (creepy) old men who raised him hadn't explained to Kaworu that being naked was freaky, they definitely hadn't explained why or given him the talk about sex in general. Possibly so that the angel wouldn't understand what they were doing to him… Shinji tried to tell his mind not to go there, really, but it wasn't like he had anything else to do but think and try _not _to think about what his body was doing or feeling or the sounds Kaworu was making just from having his back, scalp and neck rubbed (Shinji's hands hadn't gone under his clothes or anything perverted) or what was going to happen next.

They'd been out at the beach when the sun rose, so Kaworu dying (and presumably letting Shinji go) 'today' still left _hours. _Hours of Kaworu moving against him while making such pretty sounds, and now Kaworu's hands were rubbing Shinji's back, probably doing what he'd learned felt good by making Shinji's hands doing it to him, and _oh_ Shinji knew _he'd _be moaning if he had enough control over his voice. It wasn't the kind of touch a certain part of Shinji was about ready to beg for, but _damn_, it felt so, so good. No wonder Kaworu had shuddered against him. It was a helpless feeling, but it was a _good _feeling.

It took Shinji a moment to register that Kaworu had murmured "I want to make you feel good. Will you smile when I free you and you can kill me? You can do anything you want to me and I'll let you, to make up for this. It feels good when your hands touch me: I wonder if I'll even enjoy being killed by you? I wish I could hear that you feel good now, but I don't want to hear you say that you hate me. Not now. You say things that hurt me, and I don't want to be hurt, not yet. I want to imagine that something like you loves me, because it's a good feeling."

Silence for awhile, but then Kaworu wondered "Do you think I should dress up or shower before we go to the beach for me to die, or will you just tear at me enough to ruin my clothes anyway? It's not like it really matters what I look like to people after I'm dead. Except… Well, as long as you remember me, you can have my body look however you like."

He was talking again, but Shinji didn't mind so much. It was a distraction from how good those hands felt and the way a certain part of him was starting to actively hurt. Damn it, if only he could talk and he could make Kaworu let him up long enough to go into the bathroom and take care of this or something. It was probably a good thing he hadn't had breakfast before he went to the beach, or he might _actually _have to go to the bathroom.

"Oh," Kaworu realized. "Since I don't want to waste time going to Terminal Dogma and letting you get in the Eva, I should leave my note somewhere it's easy to find so you won't get in trouble for killing me. Humans do, right? I've seen that on those TV shows, but the old men have people killed all the time, when they aren't wanted anymore. Or if they're disobedient, like not going to Lilith and causing Third Impact will be disobedient. But I don't want to die and I don't want you to die." He tilted his head up and kissed the line of Shinji's jaw, lowering his head relative to Shinji's, and it felt so weird for Kaworu who just did things regardless of what Shinji said, much less an angel, to do something that felt like a gesture of submission. Like Rei putting Shinji above herself, Shinji's life above her own. Like Rei's obedience to Gendo, before. And now, when the new her didn't know any better.

"Instrumentality will make all of us cease to be: I don't want to die the way they want. I want… I want to hear you," Kaworu decided. "But you must hate me. It's one thing to hear you say cruel things when you're killing me, since that way I'll know that you want my death, but not now." His hands stilled on Shinji's back, squeezed him. "If this feels good to you too, you won't hate it so much? Is wanting the other to feel good a part of love? Well yes, since touch and kisses are, and they feel good." The angel nodded, soft hair sliding along Shinji's jaw and cheek before Kaworu slid up him again, and this was some kind of gentle torture, even though Kaworu was oblivious to it.

Like being tied up, Shinji thought, and wanted to blush because this was making him a pervert. It was definitely all Kaworu's fault, definitely, for being so weird and… cute. Cute, now. Someone that needed Shinji, like Rei had needed him. Wanting Shinji to hold him, like Rei asking him to hold her hand. Guys weren't supposed to be cute! Guys weren't supposed to lick at the ears of other guys just because they wanted to touch and Shinji shouldn't be thinking of how warm Kaworu's breath was and how wet that tongue was.

Shouldn't be desperate to press his hips against Kaworu, roll over on top of him and make him stop obliviously teasing Shinji instead of _getting out of here_.

Shouldn't want to grab Kaworu's wrists and push them inside Shinji's own pants and demand that Kaworu take responsibility and molest him, damn it, because it was Kaworu's fault he was this turned on! Stupid Kaworu doing weird angel things! Shouldn't Kaworu say something like "I don't want to die a virgin," around now, anyway? There was a script to these things!

Well, yes, according to that script Shinji was supposed to be a girl, but still! Kaworu had already penetrated him with stupid angelic tentacles, hadn't he? And now he had Shinji at his mercy, in his bed, and all Shinji was getting out of it was a back massage and the worst case of blue balls he'd ever had in his life when he was supposed to be having incredible sex that he wouldn't have to feel guilty about because it was clearly all stupid Kaworu's fault for being so weird! And evil!

"You're hot," Kaworu said, puzzled, and Shinji knew that no, Kaworu wasn't commenting on Shinji's physical attractiveness from the tentative way he put a hand on Shinji's forehead. "Your body has been trying to hyperventilate again for awhile now: I don't want you to faint again so I've kept it from doing that. You must be really angry, like the time you almost attacked me over Rei, but why is your body getting hotter? I like that you're warm, but… I don't want to take you to the infirmary again. That wastes a lot of time and I don't have that much left." But if Shinji was getting sick? "I'll try getting you something from the vending machine," he decided.

Shinji's body had heated up because he was turned on, and he frustratedly wondered why Kaworu hadn't even mentioned 'part of you is swelled up' among the symptoms. That might have led to him touching it, and noticing that it was throbbing and oozing and for the sake of all the ten million gods, whoever had kept Kaworu from finding out about porn should be stepped on. By an Eva. Repeatedly. Because Shinji shouldn't have to be the one thinking these dirty things! How could someone be such a cocktease completely by accident?!

Kaworu was clearly reluctant to leave him, but he was frowning with concern and eventually managed to sit up and go, after smoothing Shinji's hair and tucking him in. He came back with fruit juice and coffee, the kinds Shinji stole from Kaworu's minifridge while he was here, and wasn't it girls who were supposed to do sweet things like notice what Shinji liked, even though Asuka never had?

It was very clear that Kaworu had no idea what to do to look after a sick person. He made Shinji sit up and carefully poured a can of juice into him, watching his throat to make sure he didn't choke or have it go down the wrong pipe. The way Kaworu was wiping sweat from his forehead felt good, the contrast between the warm hands and the cool air of the room, and Shinji got his hopes up when Kaworu took off Shinji's sweaty shirt, only to have them dashed right away when Kaworu immediately put Shinji into a dry one from Kaworu's own closet so that Shinji didn't get cold. "Is your body trying to fight me? That must be it," the angel finally decided. "Like when you were so angry at me you breathed in too much oxygen and fainted," he recalled as he lay down with Shinji and tucked them both in. "You must really hate me… Enough that it makes you hurt yourself." The way Kaworu squeezed him was apologetic. "I don't want you to feel pain: is that a part of love too? Yes."

That was when Kaworu took it into his weird and evil head to lick the sweat from Shinji's face, and neck, and chest, and if Shinji could he would have fisted his hands in the sheets but as it was he couldn't do anything, couldn't focus on anything, all he could do was feel what Kaworu did to him, that wet tongue and those willing lips, trying to make him feel good, and he wanted to push that gray head further down. Wanted those red eyes to look up at him wordlessly asking 'is this right?' while that mouth was occupied.

If the angel was going to insist on tasting him, couldn't he do it somewhere else? Shinji's body kept growing more and more tense, especially as Kaworu kept shifting against Shinji, rubbing against him without any awareness of what he was _doing _to him.

Shinji's body kept tensing up, and he wanted to groan, wanted to breathe faster, wanted to _move_. The more Kaworu kept trying to soothe him, the more Shinji wanted to squeeze his brown eyes tightly shut and be the one to hold _Kaworu _down so _Shinji_ could do things to him, since Kaworu was absolutely sucking, or rather _not _sucking, at being a tentacle monster. Tease him for hours and see how _he _liked it.

Although Kaworu would probably just be happy Shinji was touching him.

"You're getting worse…" the angel said finally, and now Kaworu was afraid for him? "I… I won't give up having you be my death, but…" He kissed Shinji again, and for the first time it was_ fierce_, before he went over to the desk, tore open an envelope and quickly wrote something on the paper inside it.

Then he started undoing the bed, removing all the blankets as Shinji was made to stand up. Some of the blankets were folded around him, to keep Shinji warm, while Kaworu threw the others over his shoulder and took Shinji's hand with his other arm, opening the door and walking quickly through the halls. It seemed to take them forever to get outside, with Kaworu glancing at him every second and Shinji glad the impromptu bathrobe would hide the condition his pants were in if anyone saw them.

Finally they were at the shore and Kaworu threw the bedspread down, spreading it out with what was left of a once-habitual neatness. Then he lay down and Shinji was positioned over him, knees on either side of Kaworu's chest, hands around Kaworu's throat.

As much as he _wanted _to strangle Kaworu right now, he didn't actually want to kill him. Trying to get control of his hands and pull them _back _made Shinji fall over when control over his body was suddenly returned to him.

When he sat up again Kaworu was pushing himself up, looking almost like he hated himself and opening his mouth to ask if Shinji was okay, and that was when Shinji _finally _got to pounce on him, to make Kaworu lie back down. Shinji said "You _idiot_," like he was Asuka now and kissed the idiot hard, shrugging the blanket that was left off his shoulders and almost growling with frustration when Kaworu's shirt absolutely refused to tear properly.

"Shinji?" Kaworu asked, and with his hair mussed up like that, kiss-bitten lips, he was just…

"I don't hate you, you idiot," Shinji told him, breathing hard and thinking screw the shirt, he was going for the button of Kaworu's pants first.

The angel let him do as he liked, unable to understand what he was doing but at least Shinji wasn't leaving or actually fainting until Shinji actually had a hand around that pale pink flesh, Kaworu's pants down around his knees and Shinji's already kicked off. The angel gasped and moaned when Shinji grasped them both, moving them together. "You want to defile my body?" he asked Shinji, startled, as Shinji grabbed Kaworu's wrists and held him over his head.

"You don't get to talk," Shinji said, holding back his own gasps in order to listen to Kaworu's, watch that pretty face as red eyes closed and the angel started breathing fast, started struggling and wanting.

"Defiled… by one of the Lilim…" Kaworu still said, ignoring him. "They'll… Ah! I won't be able to purify humanity of its sin… _Yes_," he said, and now there was lust in his voice. "Shinji… _desecrate me_."

Kaworu still said the weirdest things, but Shinji was too close to care.

The Fifth Child had been acting suspiciously for days now: after observing him muttering to himself out in the middle of the lake, much less talking to Ritsuko, Misato was certain that he was the last angel, the one that had been acquired by the Committee for Human Instrumentality.

Shinji hadn't talked about why he'd stayed over at Kaworu's in the first place: he'd barely gotten along with the other pilot before. To have them go there holding hands? And now Shinji being led through the halls draped in blankets? That was weird, but Misato had actually been waiting for a chance to search the Fifth Child's rooms.

On the desk next to a torn-open envelope was the letter it had contained, with an additional message scrawled at the bottom with a blue pen Kaworu hadn't bothered to cap afterwards. Both messages sent her running out of the room, reaching for her phone to call Hyuga to help her find them.

* * *

_This is the Last Testament of the Angel Tabris, the Final Messenger:_

_Let the Black Seed remain unpurified and Lilith's Children never know eternity. The last of the True Successors dies today, as himself, at the hands of the only one who is found worthy. Those who hope for Instrumentality can go to Hell. _

_Kaworu Nagisa, the Fifth Child._

_P.S. Please look after Shinji. I've possessed him for hours in order to make him hold me and it may have made him sick. _

* * *

"You were the one who was trying to get me to like you! You can't want me to be your friend and then want me to kill you, you bastard! It doesn't work that way!"

"Why not! This is my last request, so if you really do care for me at all-"

Whatever Misato had been expecting, Shinji and the Angel sitting on a blanket like this was some kind of picnic and arguing wasn't it.

Shinji ran his fingers through his messed-up hair to push it back in a frustrated motion. "Well, if you're defiled and whatever and can't do Third Impact like they want _anyway, _then won't they leave you alone?"

"It's the disobedience they'll kill me for! When by refusing to grant them instrumentality and complementation, I've damned your species to continuing this hellish existence? And you, for daring to corrupt a Child of Adam!"

"Are you complaining?"

"No, and I want to do it again, but you need to kill me and get away before the assassins get here!" Kaworu insisted, grabbing Shinji's unbuttoned shirt, the blanket sliding down off his shoulders to reveal that he was naked under it. "I can't let them kill _you_."

"You've got an AT field, haven't you? What have you got to worry about? They'd have to reconfigure Unit 02's core before they could have Rei's replacement attack you," Shinji reminded him as Kaworu leaned against his chest. Shinji ended up patting the slim boy on the back awkwardly, and submitting to the kiss when Kaworu took Shinji's head in his hands and leaned up.

"I love you," the angel said fiercely. "That means you aren't allowed to die!"

"You have an AT field, so I'm still not seeing the problem. Why do you have to die, Kaworu? You don't _want _to cause Third Impact, right?"

"Do you ever think about anything but what you want?" the angel asked, exasperated, getting to his feet and gesturing up at the sky with both hands.

"Kaworu, you can't just let anyone who wants to see you like that!" Shinji insisted, grabbing the blanket again. "If you want me to kill you, then you have to at least put some pants on first!"

"I don't care about that, they've seen me plenty of times-"

"That doesn't mean they should get to see you anymore!" Shinji grabbed Kaworu, crushing the angel clad only in a white sheet against his body. "You're the one that said that love means wanting someone to live, and you're the one who wanted to know what it would be like if I loved you, so it's like this: I don't want to lose any more people! And I'm sick of seeing what my father did to Rei and now the new Rei! You are not allowed to die like Touji and Rei and they're not allowed to kill you! Or treat you like a thing!"

"You're wrong, by the way: It's not Unit 02 I have to worry about. They're working on a mass-produced series of Evas with working dummy plugs, based on me. And do you really think you-"

"I'm not going to abandon you like that cat!"

"Shinji… I can't let you put yourself in danger," the angel said quietly, then pushed Shinji away and ran.

Only to stop only a handful of meters down the shore, slowly turning around and looking where he'd stepped. He looked utterly shocked, drawing the white sheet tighter around himself as he looked at what had sprung up in his wake.

"…Did you mean to do that?" Shinji asked Kaworu, also staring at the patches of color that decorated what had once been barren ground.

Misato crept closer, waving for Hyuga to stay back, as the two boys watched silvery-green leaves unfurl.

"…This is why the Lances of Longinus exist, because otherwise Seeds of Life and Wisdom will spontaneously generate life. I'm the vessel of Adam's soul, but this has never happened before."

"Maybe if you put shoes on?" Shinji suggested. Then he paused and knelt down to feel the blanket they'd lain on, finally lifting up a corner of it, revealing blue-green moss dotted with red flowers. "Or maybe not."

Kaworu folded his arms, pinning the sheet to his body. "Now you definitely have to kill me. Take responsibility for this!"

"So it will be harder to hide-"

"So your planet could be overrun! Seeds of Life are more powerful than Seeds of Wisdom: think of the difference between you Lilim and the other angels. Kill me and have Katsuragi come back with a flamethrower."

"Misato's here?" Shinji asked, looking around faintly panicked.

"I saw her while she was dodging around." SEELE's angel didn't look impressed. "I wonder if she found my note?" He looked at the slab of concrete she was hiding behind. "Come out and help me reason with this selfish bastard! He has to take responsibility for this!"

"Stop saying weird things, Kaworu! You're acting like I got you pregnant!"

"Well, what else could have made me fertile!" Kaworu's red eyes flashed as he walked forward to grab at Shinji's clothing again, Shinji quickly grabbing the white sheet before more than the top half of Kaworu's back was bared to Misato's gaze. "I don't want to spend the rest of eternity pinned up like a butterfly, or getting molested by Lilim scientists like Adam was until they desecrated his body and forced him to bear me! _Someone _had better kill me, and I won't let anyone else!"

Shinji tied the sheet around Kaworu's waist before responding. "And I won't let you die! I'm sick of it, Kaworu! I can't bear losing anyone else! I can't face Hikari and Kensuke," not after being used to kill their friend, "Rei, and… They've got Lilith back at NERV, right? And Rei used the lance to kill the one that hurt Asuka? If it's safe to have her there without the Lance, they can just let you stay there!"

"Shinji… Why did you have to start caring about me now? I know I wanted you to, but…" The angel leaned against him, no, almost threw himself into embracing Shinji, and this time it was the human boy that kissed him as a white tree grew and blossomed behind them.

"You're weird, and you're an angel – and another guy – but you're still…" Shinji sighed into Kaworu's white hair, giving up on getting him to make sense. "You make me feel like Asuka. You're an _idiot_, but… You should get a chance to live. What's the point of fighting, of being an Eva pilot, if I can't protect anyone? If I just keep losing people?"

"Shinji, you have to get away from him! He admitted that he possessed you!" Misato couldn't even point her gun at the angel, not when she'd hit them both.

"That won't happen again, Misato, and if you're that worried just get him a teddy bear or something!" Shinji sighed again, far more irritated than resigned. "Why do you and everything about you have to be so difficult and weird and frustrating, but I can't help it." Being attracted to him, being drawn to him. When he met Kaworu for the first time, he immediately thought of the first time he met Rei.

Rei had loved him, died for him, and he'd failed to save her. But Rei's feelings were still alive in Kaworu, and letting him die would be letting Rei die all over again. "Just… make it difficult for SEELE and my father to kill you. You're really good at being difficult, and going where you're not wanted, and doing things sane people don't do, and making me care about you, so…" Use that power to annoy for good? "Why are you so resigned to them controlling you, Kaworu? Why don't you think you can even try to live? You're an angel: can't you fight? Won't you even try… Now you're the one who doesn't care about _my_ feelings!"

"…I'm sorry."

"That's the first time you've said that, but don't be sorry, just try to live. I'm sick of being controlled too, my father just uses me and throws me away and leads me around by the nose…" Made him kill his friends. One friend too many. No more. "If we die, we'll die together, Kaworu."

Misato wasn't sure who started the kiss this time, or if they both leaned towards each other, Shinji's arms around Kaworu's waist and Kaworu's under his, the angel's hands pressed flat against Shinji's back.

A human and an angel, when only one species could survive and now they were talking about Lovers' Suicide? Misato really, really wanted to shoot something. An angel and an Eva pilot, and they were such melodramatic _teenagers_.

But then, weren't they caught up in a melodrama to begin with? The truth about the dummy system, the Commander and Shinji's mother… What but soap operas had plots this twisted? This was supposed to be about destroying the angels! But the Commander sent Unit 00 to retrieve the Lance when the Evas coming in contact with Adam was supposed to set off Third Impact and Kaji had died trying to find the truth.

She was so sick of all this bullshit! All the lies! Gendo used Ritsuko like that and the Committee sent them an angel when the Marduk Institute was nothing but a front in the first place!

"I don't hear the sirens, so your AT field wasn't detected," Misato said finally, after taking a few deep breaths of her own. "You two are coming with me." Life springing from the ground where he stepped, god. SEELE trying to create a god, or gods? What kind of beings were angels, when their DNA was the same as human DNA despite being made of particle wave matter? Which Misato had yet to get an actual explanation of, since matter that was known to be both wave and particle included photons and electrons. Looking at the angel, in a white sheet like some young Greek god, she could believe the 'made of light' theory. After seeing Adam, the great giants of light during Second Impact.

"After you get dressed," Shinji told Kaworu. "Or we can wrap you in a blanket and carry you to Misato's car if you're that worried about it." It was hard for Shinji to worry about plants. Living things were easy to kill. _Too_ easy: that was the problem.

He hadn't wanted to take responsibility for anyone else, to be responsible for the survival of another friend, another comrade, another… But Kaworu was so much like Rei, so much like Shinji, in that they both had fathers who were pure evil, and… What had he been fighting for, all this time? To protect poor broken Rei, to protect Misato, and Asuka: not some abstract world, not a future he didn't believe in, but the people close to him.

Losing Kaworu would hurt and he didn't want to be hurt anymore.

He had only two things left to lose: Kaworu and Misato.

He couldn't run away. There was nothing else worth running to, except the end of pain. Except death, what Kaworu had wanted to flee to, and if he was going there, then they might as well go together, since Shinji didn't want to be alone again.

But he had to try to live.

He owed it to Rei, and Misato insisted she owed it to Kaji. So…

So he would let Kaworu cling to him, lying in the backseat of Misato's car on the way home, to try to figure out what they were going to do, where they were going to go next.


	6. In Love With Love

_I would _really _like feedback, both from people who have read the manga and people who haven't, on how well I'm getting across the personality of manga!Kaworu. Normally I have an easy time with inhuman characters, but really manga!Kaworu's problem is that he's too human. And raised by a crazy death cult, and... Well, he just got fucked over by the universe in general. _

_Am I getting across what he's like and the differences from the anime well? Is it too influenced by the anime, is it IC, am I doing the more tsundere manga!Shinji and their interactions well... I would really, really appreciate it._

* * *

What exactly was SEELE hoping to do by calling him to meet with them and let them interrogate him now? The Lance of Longinus was already in lunar orbit, out of their reach. All they could do was try to lock the barn door after the horse had already been stolen, or try to put the fear of them into him.

Gendo Ikari wasn't a man who scared easily.

One thing about the conversation did surprise him, though. While he was politely telling SEELE what amounted to "You can't do jack shit about what I do or my control over NERV, not at this stage of the scenario, so why don't you stop wasting all our time with this ridiculous posturing?" he heard a mewing sound that didn't have the distortion it should if it was coming from one of the monoliths.

He peered around him, but the darkness beyond the ring of monoliths was absolute. They could have had a dozen men with guns there for all he could tell. Or a stray cat could have taken up residence in the abandoned building SEELE had called him to for this meeting.

Commander Ikari wasn't fool enough to think it was anything so innocent, however, especially when SEELE's replacement pilot had arrived earlier today carrying a kitten.

The way the old men let him go faster than he would have anticipated after that just confirmed that theory: they wanted him out of here after the accidental and thus embarrassing reveal that there was another spectator present.

Indeed, once Gendo was out the door, another area of the room was lit up to reveal a young man in the local school uniform slouching in a chair with a white-furred kitten on his lap. The kitten was quite firmly attached to the rubber tip of a baby bottle, suckling hungrily.

"Tabris, can't you control that animal?" the first monolith asked, annoyed.

"I did: I put it to sleep before the meeting. It was woken up by the raised voices." Tabris was amused and "I'm sure Gendo Ikari was pleased to see some of you forget your composure."

"That aside," one of the members of SEELE said, after clearing his throat and trying to cover his guilt, "Why didn't you stop him from losing the lance? You were right there!"

"And how do you think I could have accomplished that?" the angel wondered. "It would have been inconvenient for me to reveal myself at that point. However, now that Gendo Ikari knows that I am one of your agents," there was a difference between sent by SEELE and loyal to SEELE: Ikari would know that well, "I should be able to restrain him more subtly in future."

"Ah," Keel said, placated by the reassurance that there was in fact strategy between the angel's seeming carelessness. "You've already learned to mimic the way teenagers sit: tell me, what did you observe of them and the Third Child today?"

"They're so curious about people other than themselves," Tabris said with a strange smile. Most of the Committee saw it as pity, with a light hint of mockery of the lesser beings, but it also might have been regret or backhanded admiration. "They get angry and flustered on behalf of others, worry about them and brood over it incessantly. It's fascinating to watch." He wanted to see more of it.

"Humans are like that," Keel said dismissively. "And once the plan is executed, it is from that which we shall be free."

Tabris carefully did not raise an eyebrow. Free from compassion? When lack of compassion for others was one of the reasons SEELE believed the Lilim should be destroyed by instrumentality?

"But why did Tabris acquire the animal?" another one wondered.

"Shinji Ikari intended to abandon it, and I couldn't let it starve to death needlessly." When he was an angel, after all, and they had taught him to end the painful existence of Lilith's creations. "It would have been more efficient to put it out of its misery, but that would hardly have given the Third Child a proper impression of me." And they did want him to observe that one especially, since Gendo Ikari would obviously use his own son as a critical part of whatever he had planned. The boy was more likely to let something slip than his cunning deceiver of a father.

"Indeed, having a small animal should make you more approachable, Tabris. That aside, report any more improper action on Ikari's part to us."

"Of course," he said, ducking his head partially to conceal a smirk.

* * *

"So, what do you think of the new pilot?" Misato asked, desperate for a topic of conversation that wasn't what happened to Asuka during today's battle.

"He's _weird_." Shinji took a bite of dinner and thought. "He got lost on his way to the school and was playing piano in an abandoned building when I found him, but after I took him there he came with me to NERV instead." Well, it wasn't like there was much point to being there, with almost everyone gone. And if they'd seen him come up to the building with Shinji, after Shinji killed Touji? He probably wouldn't have had a very good time of it anyway.

"He was going to take a kitten to school?" Misato asked.

"Well, the kitten was following me when I ran into him, and he said that if it had a mother, it would be fed, it was too young and weak to hunt and if we left without taking it with us…" Shinji didn't state the obvious conclusion. "So he just decided to keep it. Like I said, he's pretty weird."

"I guessed that from the way I found you two and Asuka in the girls' bathroom," Misato said.

Shinji groaned. "I asked him what he was thinking afterwards and he didn't know what the sign meant." Weren't those signs pretty universal? "So… yeah." Weird.

"Sounds like a real space cadet." What planet would you have to be from not to recognize those signs? And this was the young man Misato had just had to take into NERV as the Fifth Child and Asuka's replacement. Wonderful. "Well, Ritsuko likes him. Gave him a bottle and told him how to warm up milk and test it on his arm first." So the kitten's mouth didn't get burnt. Of course, despite the fact that she should have liked someone who volunteered to rescue a starving cat, much less a kitten, Ritsuko had been grumpier than usual at him, almost like she expected him to hurt or neglect it? No, if Ritsuko thought that she would have taken it away from him, surely. She must just have wanted to make it clear that neglect was unacceptable because he _was _a teenage boy, after all, Misato told herself.

* * *

Kaworu left the little pale fluffy thing with Ritsuko during the next day's sync test. She appeared somewhat mollified by how content it seemed, at least until Kaworu left and it became clear that the little thing was afraid of being left alone again to starve. Still, she told herself, at least that meant it wasn't afraid of _him_.

It, rather. Just like the other one.

The Fifth Child had even managed to give it a bath without …him being too traumatized, it seemed: the kitten's fur was soft now instead of matted. Of course, she didn't have the chance to give it a checkup until after the sync test, but it took the newbie enough time to shower and get dressed afterwards for her to verify that the kitten wasn't sick and that he hadn't done anything to it.

He looked somewhat puzzled and amused when he came to retrieve it, although not by her or the kitten. "Yen for your thoughts?" Ritsuko asked.

"My stall was almost out of soap, and Shinji's reaction was pretty funny," he said, shaking his head at the memory of how weird Shinji had been. "How is Suki?"

"You're naming a male kitten Suki?" Such a cutesy name, roughly meaning 'I like you?'

"It's short for Tsukiyomi." The Japanese word for moonlight that actually meant moonshadow, and also the name of the brother of Amaterasu and Susano-o. He smiled, admitting that was "Not very creative, I know," given the color of the kitten's fur.

"I've heard worse."

"How is he?" the red-eyed young man asked again, instead of wanting to hear some of those awful and hence funny cat names.

"Still half-starved, but better than yesterday. Keep feeding him, and I'll get you some formula."

"Thank you, Dr. Akagi," he said, still casually, picking up the sleeping kitten and putting him in one of his pants pockets, keeping his hand in that pocket where the kitten could lick at it. "By the way, how long would it take for him to be able to survive on his o-"

That was when the alarm sounded, heralding the attack of the next angel.

* * *

"Well, that was a stupid thing to do," Kaworu said afterwards as he buckled his red leather belt.

"What?" Shinji demanded, grabbing the front of Kaworu's shirt. "How could you… damn you! Say that again, I…"

That was when he fainted, and Kaworu had to grab him before he slid down Kaworu's chest to the ground.

"…" 'Humans,' was what Kaworu would have said if there weren't probably cameras in here. Well, he'd probably better get the Third Child to the infirmary.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Shinji said as he followed Kaworu back to his room afterwards, carrying the cat since contact was good for distressed humans and Shinji appeared not to be willing to touch people unless he was angry at them, which seemed the wrong way around to the angel.

"No, I think I understand why you reacted that way." Kaworu wasn't going to apologize for saying it, though, not when dying _was _a damn stupid thing for Rei to do. She had an AT field: yes, it would have meant revealing herself unless Gendo Ikari had already taken precautions, but it was better than dying and never being with Shinji. Better than leaving Shinji to mourn, when she loved him. Was she that afraid that he would reject her if he discovered she was an angel? Kaworu was disconnected from her when her Eva's AT field inverted, so he couldn't be sure what the hell she'd been thinking when she blew herself up.

Still, her death wasn't necessary, not when she could have shielded herself from the blast.

"I wish that I'd had more of a chance to save her too, but…" Shinji bowed his head. He'd been so useless out there. The angel would have just taken over his Eva too, like Rei and Asuk- The one that was now Kaworu's. "Can we not talk about her?" That was why he was going with Kaworu: Misato would try to comfort him and need comforting, and Shinji couldn't face that. Talking about it would make it real.

When they got there Shinji settled himself in front of the TV and started watching mindless romance movies, which piqued Kaworu's interest since they were clearly the kind of trash SEELE would never have let him watch and he had a sudden and rather pressing interest in this 'love' thing. Kaworu still had to get up to make warm milk every so often, and get Suki to the litterbox, although fortunately angel powers let him cheat by sensing the kitten's body in order to get him there in time so he didn't pee on either Shinji's lap or Kaworu's bed.

So much trouble, but having a distraction did seem to be making Shinji feel better, and was likely at least part of the reason he'd decided he wanted to come here and let Kaworu look after him after Rei's death.

Kaworu frowned because he would have to release the kitten in Tokyo-3 again before he died, unless he wanted it to be cut up in Dr. Akagi's labs, and he doubted he had more than one or two days before SEELE would order him to make his bid for instrumentality. It was a pity that all this was ultimately futile: Suki wouldn't be able to survive on his own after so little time. Everything Kaworu did to look after him now would just lengthen the time he spent starving to death.

Two doomed creatures, with no chance to survive: Kaworu had felt for the kitten and wanted to end its pain because of that, but maybe there wasn't any harm in letting Suki have a nice couple of days before the end? Having Shinji here (Kaworu glanced at the boy Rei loved out of the corner of his eyes) might be pleasant. It added a fluttery nervous feeling and happy sort-of-bubbles to the tightness of his chest.

Of course, Shinji still had feelings for Rei, or so the part of Kaworu that held Rei's feelings hoped. Then there was the Second Child, and how Shinji had been at her bedside waiting for her to wake up even though it distressed Rei.

How soon would Asuka wake up or Commander Ikari think up a reasonable explanation for Rei's survival, Kaworu wondered, kicking his feet idly as he watched Shinji watch the movie.

"You reminded me of her when I first met you," Shinji said out of nowhere. "You act pretty different," Kaworu was more expressive, did things like sprawl on a bed and get in people's personal space instead of Rei's formality, but they both acted _weird. "_You still kind of have the same… feel, or something. So while I'm here, it's like she's not gone."

"When the angel infested both of us, I could feel her," Kaworu said, thinking about what it would be safe to say. He found himself caring about Shinji's opinion much more now: it wasn't just a matter of being accepted among the humans of NERV, but there were these feelings, too. "We were the same even before that, though."

"What do you mean?" Shinji asked, turning to look at him, careful not to jar the stuffed kitten sleeping on his lap.

"If she didn't tell you herself, I shouldn't," was what Kaworu said, adding "Sorry." That apology was mostly false: he wanted Shinji to think of him as like Rei, to have the same feelings as he might have had for Rei, but he didn't want to reveal that he was an angel.

The Third Child looked at him with curious brown eyes. "What, are you related or something?"

"…In a sense," Kaworu said, and was glad when Shinji turned back to the movie and left it at that, probably because thinking of Rei right now was too painful. "I might need to get up in the night to feed Suki, so you can have the half of the bed that's against the wall," he told his guest. "Just climb over me."

"Thanks, Kaworu," Shinji said, nodding absently. Was he using the mindlessness of TV Kaworu had heard of in order to clear his mind of thoughts, specifically thoughts of Rei?

* * *

The second time Kaworu was woken up in the middle of that night was Shinji, thrashing and breathing harshly. Kaworu stared down at him, wondering where he was going to find a bag. He'd asked for some yesterday, but they were already in the trash full of kitty litter. Well, the point of having Shinji breathe into a bag would be that there was only so much oxygen in there, so it would keep him from getting enough to fall unconscious.

Kaworu learned over Shinji's face, closer and closer, remembering a maneuver he'd seen in those movies. If he opened his mouth, then Shinji could breathe into it, share the air in Kaworu's lungs. Kaworu hoped it would work, not just because he wanted more sleep but if it did work, then Kaworu would have an excuse for doing it again the next time Shinji got like this, he thought as he closed his mouth over Shinji's open one, hands on the other teenager's face.

Shinji's breath tasted terrible, since he hadn't gone home to get his toothbrush before coming to Kaworu's, but this was still… intimate. Sharing breath, sharing life. Their mouths together and neither of them biting. Better than holding Shinji's hand, Rei's memories whispered in his hindbrain.

It felt like an eternity before Shinji almost jumped, pushing Kaworu away as he bolted upright. "What was that?!" he demanded.

"Ah, it worked!" Kaworu said, delighted. "You aren't hyperventilating anymore."

"You kissed me because of that?" Shinji asked, wide-eyed. "Like CPR or something?" At Kaworu's nod Shinji said "Next time, get a bag! I mean, CPR's one thing, but guys don't kiss guys!"

"So if I was a girl, would you let me kiss you?"

"What?"

Kaworu only smiled briefly. "It's nothing, but… Remember how I said that I could feel Rei when the angel connected us? This feeling in my chest… I might have kissed you because of her," the angel said, putting his hand over his heart. "Because she wanted to kiss you."

"So the angel was in both of your heads? Like Asuka?" Shinji looked scared. "Are you okay?"

"I think so, but these emotions… They're very strong." He touched his lips briefly. "Wanting to touch someone, wanting to kiss, wanting them not to die… So this is what love feels like. What does it feel like to be loved?" he asked Shinji. "I wonder how I would feel if you loved me."

"Wouldn't that be weird?" Shinji asked Kaworu. "I mean, another guy?"

"Rei's feelings," Kaworu reminded him. "Wouldn't it be weird for her to be loved by another girl, if two guys is weird?"

"I'm not even sure Rei liked me. She didn't say how she felt after that time she asked me to hold her hand, and then she didn't want to be close after…" Touji, and what happened to Asuka.

"Humans don't always act on what they feel. For you, human contact is as much a need as food, water or oxygen, and yet you shrink back from it when it's offered because you're afraid of getting hurt. Damned if you do, damned if you don't: either way you'll be really sad, either because your body isn't getting what it needs or you might get heartbroken," Kaworu said, lying back on his side of the bed. "Are all of you really so afraid of living?" When Kaworu wanted to live, and couldn't. "That's pathetic," he said, and sighed, aggravated. "Cats are much more sensible, aren't they Suki?"

Curled up in a nest made of the orange shirt & white dress shirt Kaworu had worn that day, the kitten's breathing was the only response.

"He followed you because he wanted to be saved instead of dying painfully and alone," Kaworu reminded Shinji, leaning up again to poke Suki's little tummy. "You're lonely yourself, and yet you were just going to leave him there because it was too much trouble to look after him and you didn't want the guilt of putting him out of his misery. You're kind of a selfish bastard, aren't you?" he said, without much acrimony. In Kaworu's limited experience, basically all humans were. Even Ritsuko, who was helping him look after the cat, clearly knew he was an angel and was afraid he'd hurt the cat, but she cared about her own skin far more than about whatever an enemy of all life on this world must have planned for such a poor, helpless little creature. "And stupid, when by not reaching out to others you're hurting yourself. Do you want to end up a bitter, lonely old man?" Like SEELE? "Blaming everything on human nature when you're the one who didn't bother to try to get what you wanted? I despise people like that."

"Then why are you letting me stay here?" Shinji asked, with just a hint of rising anger on his own behalf, even though he couldn't argue with Kaworu's words.

"I'm not sure," Kaworu said as the kitten woke up enough to wriggle and sleepily lick his finger (in case it was a bottle). "I think it was a combination of Rei's feelings – wanting you to be okay, and happy, wanting to hold you – and that you were actually willing to come stay at the place of someone who you just met because it was what you needed. Reaching out for human contact instead of letting yourself starve because you're too scared to try." At least Suki, who had been on his last legs, had tried following Shinji, tried getting help with what energy the little thing had left. Instead of lying down and dying peacefully without having to suffer rejection from the uncaring humans.

As nice as the other option sounded to Kaworu. Falling asleep in the sun somewhere he could smell the sea, Suki on his lap… A pity Nerv would remove this Lilim body well before Suki was old enough to use it as a food source. It would be nice if someone would get some benefit out of this body being made out of meat.

The kitten provided companionship in exchange for food and actively sought out contact and company, unlike Shinji who had only grabbed Kaworu when pissed off. If he hadn't contacted the kitten's mind himself Kaworu would have wondered if Lilim really were the only sentient children of Lilith, because they certainly weren't the smartest species on the planet.

Kaworu picked up Suki and kissed his cute little nose. "See? He's not scared, and he's a lot smaller than you." Although from Kaworu's perspective, kittens and Lilim were equally easy to squash.

"I wasn't scared, it's just… Guys don't kiss guys!"

The angel frowned. "I don't like people lying to my face." Humans did it too often. When Shinji looked like he didn't understand, Kaworu explained, "At first you liked it, then when you realized that it was me you were scared a moment afterwards. When you started worrying about what other humans would think? Then you covered that fear up with anger, but the reason you reject my feelings, and Rei's feelings is that you're scared. Your body obviously doesn't care that I'm a guy."

Shinji blushed, remembering the flash of heat that had gone through him as his body, unlike his confused and dreaming mind, registered the feel of someone else's lips on his, of someone holding him like a precious thing. "S-Shut up."

Rei's emotions made Kaworu crave Shinji, but was that because _he _viewed Shinji as someone worth loving or was he just desperate to be loved? To have someone that cared whether he lived or died, some company in these final days now that he knew it was possible for a human to care for something like him?

Suki wouldn't care if he was an angel as long as the survival necessities and pettings kept coming, Kaworu knew. Simple, straightforward, sensible. Unlike Lilim with their lies and their desire to control everything: at least cats were honest. And actually held up their end of the bargain.

"You can lie to yourself, but that's no reason to be rude to me when you're a guest in my quarters."

"Sorry." At least Shinji did apologize about the 'Shut up' part. "You probably don't know about… It's really rude to call someone gay."

"…No, I definitely wasn't accusing you of being happy. Maybe if you were a little more honest with yourself…"

"No, um, gay means…"

"I know what it means," Kaworu said, interrupting Shinji's interruption of him. "While you were watching soap operas I looked up Lilim…" Lilim mating rituals wasn't the right phrase to use here. "How dating works." And apparently only getting to holding hands on purpose _once _was really pathetic. If it weren't for Shinji's feelings, Kaworu would repeat his assertion that Rei was _stupid_.

"You're not going to buy me flowers, are you?" Shinji joked, but he looked a little worried that Kaworu would, because Kaworu was weird.

"No. According to most sources, flowers and chocolates are for courting women. I'll buy you steak, though. I want to see if Suki could handle meat yet, if I cut it into small pieces."

"I don't think any restaurants here are still open, but if you bought steak, I guess I could cook it." For Kaworu and the kitten.

"Excellent." Kaworu grinned. First steak, then blowjobs: this might work out after all.

Of course, just because this world hated him, the next morning Misato called about Rei and Kaworu had to figure out how to avoid burning Suki's steak himself.

* * *

"This room is monitored, you know," was what Ritsuko said when she saw her visitor.

"Not anymore." Kaworu smiled, cat in his arms. "Working for the Committee does have some perks. We had an appointment, didn't we?" For Suki's next check-up.

She raised an eyebrow at him, but, "I'll see what I can do without my equipment."

"That won't be a problem either, as long as I'm back in," he checked his cell phone. It didn't get any signal down here, but it still had the time. "Four hours and twelve minutes. The Committee has no reason to be unhappy with you, so you'll be safe as long as you're out of Gendo Ikari's reach. Well, as safe as anyone is."

"You'd know more about that than I would."

"Only a little." He frowned, looking worriedly down at the cream-colored life in his arms, then back up at her. "Are you coming, or will I need to look for someone else to adopt my cat?"

"What?" she asked, startled enough to finally stand up, trying to make out the nuances of his expression in the dark room. But then, he was just an angel wearing a human mask: would that really tell her anything but what he wanted her to see?

"What I don't tell you, the Committee can't hold you responsible for," he said, shifting his weight from one leg to another impatiently. "But very soon I won't be in a position to look after anyone or anything. What you said when I brought Suki to NERV: were you just trying to get him away from me, or are you actually willing to take him in? And keep him off of dissection tables."

"Is this the price I'll have to pay for my freedom?"

"No, this is for helping me get Suki healthier." He pouted with a teenager's impatient annoyance. "It's alright if you say no, I'll just have to think of some other way to make sure he survives until he can manage on his own. Or at least has as much of a chance as the rest of you."

As the people who weren't Kaworu, Ritsuko wondered? Was the angel anticipating his defeat? "I'll think about it on my way out of here."

The lanky teenager shrugged with one shoulder, glancing down the hall. "Fine, let's just get moving. _Today _I have all day, but the old men want to meet with me tomorrow morning."

* * *

"Disgusting weakling," Asuka said scowling as Shinji walked the rest of the way up the slope. She was already scanning the horizon when he braced his hands on his upper legs, panting for breath.

There was the stupid giant Rei head – Asuka should have guessed that doll was an angel, she clearly hadn't been _human_ – red waters and bare rock. Nothing else, not as far as Asuka could see, but she kept looking for some movement, some sign of life… "There!" After getting her bearings, noting landmarks so she could keep moving towards her target even once there were obstacles in her line of sight, she started running down the slope.

Oh thank _God_, she thought once she made it there and saw that it wasn't just something blowing in the wind but actual movement. Not only was there another human being in this hellish world but it was a boy, meaning Shinji wasn't the last man on Earth, not that Shinji was a _man _to begin with.

Telling the part of her mind that knew that unless more people showed up, attempting to have some excuse for genetic diversity would require her to bear Shinji's children _anyway _to shut up, she called, "Hey, you!"

Yes: that was definitely a male uniform, and no breasts under it. Asuka wasn't pleased by the red eyes, especially since his skin had enough healthy color to it to prove that he wasn't an albino and might be another like that doll, the one whose creepy angel face was on the horizon, but was he holding a cat?

He was. _Fantastic_. Meat! Asuka hadn't seen any other living things from the top of that hill, either: if all life on earth had returned to the primordial soup, repopulating the human race would be futile since none of them would last ten days without anything to eat. Still, if animals were returning, hopefully plants would too.

"Kaworu?" Shinji asked, surprised. "You disappeared: I thought you were dead!"

"Yes, I thought so too." The white-haired boy scowled, sitting cross-legged as the red surf washed around him. He was high enough up that only a centimeter or so of water reached him with each wave, but it was still odd that he hadn't gotten the rest of the way out. Shinji knew being this close to it made him worry about getting reabsorbed. "No such luck. My soul was trapped in one of the clones, and without my memories I wasn't anything more than a puppet to those damn old men…" The cat made a sound of protest when Kaworu's hands clenched in anger. "Sorry, Suki." Mollified by the pettings, the cat's purr resumed.

"Wha-You're the boy who was there with Shinji when I was…" When the angel was invading her mind.

He nodded. "And you're the Second Child, not that it matters now. I'm surprised to see you two here. The old men didn't think any humans would have the will to reject instrumentality." He snorted. "Didn't think I would, either." Yet here he was.

"Do you think more people will show up?" Shinji asked, looking up and down the shore.

"Who knows?" Kaworu shrugged offhand, clearly not giving a damn.

"Well, I don't have any genetic defects or bad recessives," Asuka knew, since she'd been created via sperm bank and selected ovum, "but Shinji here is pure defect. Fortunately there's you, and hopefully a few more people will show up, enough to give humanity a chance of surviving."

He stared at her. "What?" The hell? "Sorry, but I have no intention of helping repopulate the Lilim. For one thing, I'm what you call an angel: my children wouldn't _be _Lilim like you, even if I wanted them to, and for another there's another species I'd rather save. One that's far more worthy to inherit the earth." The eerie boy looked down at his pet. "I'm going to see if Dr. Akagi wants to live while I'm getting myself some more cats," he conceded. "But I don't think she'll want any part of it either." Not Ikari babies, not after what Shinji's father did to her.

* * *

_The counter to Valentine's is Steak & Blowjob Day. _

_In which Kaworu decides that cats are infinitely preferable to closeted tsunderes who ditch him for clones and becomes a crazy cat angel. I think he lives with Ritsuko in the Petit Eva manga? Yeeeeeah. They shall bond over how kitties are great and Ikaris are jerks._


	7. In Love With Love 2

_This is actually a sequel to the previous chapter (I know, I'm breaking a policy). Well, a combination of a missing scene explaining how Kaworu died since Shinji wasn't responsible & a sequel. _

_I think I'm going to warn for suicide, even though said suicide is canon. Although here it's assisted suicide instead of Suicide By Cop._

* * *

One of the perks of looking after Rei was that Ritsuko had a medical license and could write prescriptions. One of the perks of 'working for' SEELE was that Kaworu had cash, and had brought prettymuch all of it to give to her because what else would he have to spend it on, since she was taking Suki with her?

"Is this it?" he asked her, once he made it out of the twenty-four hour pharmacy.

Just to be on the safe side, she opened the bottle and looked at the pills. "Yes," she said, and saw him give a little sigh of relief, shoulders relaxing.

"Thank you," he told her, hugging the kitten to his chest.

"Don't thank me yet," she warned him, deeply-rooted cynicism coming to the fore. He wasn't the only one the world hated, after all. "Just because it has worked as intended on Rei doesn't guarantee it will do what you want."

"It should. Or I hope so," he corrected himself, but she could see the renewed tension that came with hope. "Thank you for writing it for me." Even though he'd warned her it could get her in trouble with SEELE.

"It's a narcotic. As long as you're careful, why should they think it had anything to do with you? I might just have needed the money," Ritsuko said, pushing her back her dyed-blonde hair with familiar frustration. At least he was so much more… real than Rei had ever been.

No one who liked cats could possibly be all bad. "I've told you how to get back to Tokyo-3 without triggering the alarms," a backdoor Gendo had made her put in to hide Rei's AT field if she ever did something Gendo ordered her to, "so…"

"I don't want to go back to Tokyo-3," he told her. "There's too much risk they'll find me in time."

"So I guess we'll keep heading north along the coast." Put some distance between them and this place before it started getting closer to dawn.

"…Thank you," he said, looking surprised she said 'we' instead of trying to get rid of him now that she'd repaid her debt.

"I'm not going to take Suki away from you _now_."

"Thank you," Kaworu said again, voice quiet and vulnerable this time, shoulders squeezed in like he was trying to make himself small. Either because the compassion in her words hurt, or because he was sounding like a child, like someone giving a shit was so new to him? Well, given that he'd been raised by those damn old men who had made her strip naked to interrogate her, basic human decency probably did come as a surprise.

He was quiet after they got in the car, except for a few soft murmurs when Suki wanted a response. It was Ritsuko that spotted a cove and pulled over when the sky started to brighten.

"It's perfect," he said when they climbed down the rocks to the level of the sand, watching waves break against yet more jagged black rock, the sea here far too treacherous to swim. "Thank-"

"You don't have to keep thanking me," Ritsuko said, interrupting him. His voice was too soft, too vulnerable: too close to crying, and she didn't want to cry herself. "Give me the pill bottle."

"It does mean a lot," he told her as she smashed the capsules on a rock with another rock. "That you'd do this for me."

"Even animals get put to sleep." Or maybe it wasn't human mercy but remembering the terrified faces of the clones as their bodies fell apart. She could have sedated them first, it would just have taken the press of one more button.

Then again, maybe it was the way she'd felt then, when she'd told Misato to go ahead and kill her, and Misato hadn't, just looked startled by the very idea and she must think Ritsuko was so _pathetic_, easily tricked and whiny and… Well, killing an(other) angel would be Ritsuko's last act as a member of NERV. The angel had to be put down, as a danger to humanity: there was no reason not to be decent about it instead of letting him go back to be shot or experimented on to see if Gendo could get any use out of him before finally killing him.

No reason not to keep him company until the end.

Once again Ritsuko considered finishing off the bottle once he was asleep, but she'd promised to look after the cat, hadn't she? Unless she poisoned Suki too, let Kaworu be together in death with the one creature that loved him, but… No. He wanted Suki to live, that was what was stopping her. Unlike her, Kaworu wanted to live, and knew he couldn't. When she had the option of surviving, when he'd rescued her and given her the chance he couldn't have, it really would be pathetic, even cruel, not to take it. To throw away what this boy deserved.

He was looking at that powder like it was a lifeline, leaning forward so intently, and if he was Rei she would have told him to get the hell out of her personal space, although not quite in those words. Instead, she couldn't help ruffling his hair. "They say that pets look like their owners," she told him when he looked up at her with the startled eyes of a stray. "You two must have been meant for each other." So alike, the dying, half-grown kitten and the angel under a death sentence. Two orphans with no one to take them in, two children who would never live to grow up.

Now, though, Suki had a chance because of Kaworu, the chance Kaworu never had, and the twist of her red-painted lips was bitter when she realized that his wish for Suki to live was a reflection of his own wish. Saving the one like him, finding Suki someone who would care for him, was as close as Kaworu could ever come to having that for himself, to fulfilling his own dreams.

The angel's eyes were wet, startled by and grateful for her kindness and so close to tears because of it. Tears of gratitude and tears for what he could never have.

For what he only had now, what she was giving him out of pity.

She smoothed his hair this time, white-silver that somehow matched her own false gold, feeling how it was just a little wet with seaspray. He was too nervous, worried that she would stop being willing to touch him to react the way a cat would to being petted, but she knew from his wide red eyes that he appreciated it. "Let me get some cans of juice from the car," she told him, petting him a little more as a promise she'd be back down instead of ditching him.

Ritsuko did wonder what she was doing since he _was _an angel as she made her way back up the slope to where she'd parked, but eh, screw it. She'd looked after Rei for years and nothing except her heart had suffered from it, while this one was a poor kid instead of a little bitch.

Sparing him a few hours wasn't a big deal.

It would be to him, though.

She saw that he'd brushed the powder into one of his hands when she got back down. "How much of this should I eat?" he asked her.

"That should be enough," she said, opening a can and handing it to him.

Now that they were at the moment of truth, she almost wanted to tell him not to do it. That he could come with her. Hell, Misato had taken in a boy around his age and it had taken weeks for it to become an utter disaster. Ritsuko had learned her lesson about bitches like Asuka while Misato was tied up in a dark room, so she knew better than that.

It was a ridiculous idea, of course. Escaped NERV scientist and angel road trip! Fleeing across an island with all the forces of SEELE, NERV, Japan and the UN in pursuit? No, she'd just get them both killed. All three of them killed and he'd blame himself, spend his last days guilty and afraid for her. This was his last wish, this was the death he wanted. By the sea, in the open air, with the company of his cat. And her company, if he wanted it.

He'd already swallowed, anyway. Not that this meant it was too late. That was the thing about teenagers: they tended to pick methods of suicide that sucked. It made sense from an evolutionary standpoint: if someone wanted them to live, they lived. If no one did, they died. A litmus test.

Watching him drink the juice to wash the taste out of his mouth: that was when Ritsuko realized she wanted him to live. That she'd really like to try to drag him to a hospital before he fell asleep for that last time.

But she couldn't save him. Nor could she look for someone else who _could_, the way he'd found her to take in the cat he'd known he couldn't look after from the moment he picked it up.

He leaned against her unprompted when she sat down next to him, and she didn't push him away, even when he grasped at her coat. "Did you bring the bowl and cream for Suki?"

"Yes." They were in one of the bags she'd brought down. "I'll take care of it."

"Thank you." This thank you she permitted, because it was on behalf of his cat more than himself.

Suki was perfectly happy to stop romping around (they were both glad to see he had more energy now) and come back to lick cream up out of a bowl. He might or might not have been weak enough at the start to actually need the milk warmed and given to him from a bottle, but he could certainly lap it up now. Kaworu seemed to view this as a sign he was getting better instead of a hint that Ritsuko had made extra trouble for him. Not that Suki had been unhappy with the bottle: poor little thing must have missed his mother.

The relief and gratitude made Kaworu cuddle up to her as though she was his mother, leaning against her side and hugging her arm.

It… wasn't a bad feeling. "Don't fall asleep just yet, alright?" Ritsuko combed her fingers through his hair and reflected that no, she wasn't old enough to be his mother. Even if he felt young somehow, a bitter knowledge of the world and how it was out to get him combined with an almost-innocence that probably came with not having been let out in it much.

He shook his head. "This is perfect. Just like I dreamed of, except Shinji isn't here." The boy wanted to stay awake, wanted to savor these wonderful last moments.

"Like father, like son," Ritsuko said bitterly. Well. One more way they were alike. Like mother like daughter like son, ditched by Ikaris for Rei. "Sorry you're stuck with an old woman."

"No, you've been very kind." He pressed his face against her jacket now, and she knew more tears must be welling up. "I wish I'd been with you instead of with them. The First Child…" how could she not know how lucky she was?

Envy of Rei: one more way they were alike. Ritsuko hated Rei partially because she had Gendo's care and attention: Gendo had even sent her to be violated by the eyes of those old men so Rei didn't have to go strip and explain what happened to SEELE. "I'd have liked that too." Kaworu wouldn't have resembled Gendo's dead wife. Kaworu wouldn't have imitated Gendo's hidden disgust with her. "I would have gotten you a cat." Before letting him socialize with humans, as a trial run and because cats were much more likeable than people.

"This feeling… I love you," was what Kaworu said, after shuddering and clinging tighter to her. "You've helped Suki and… you've been so kind. You've granted my last request." His one wish. His one choice, to choose the manner of his death, and he wanted to spend it with her.

"Kind is not a word people often use to describe me." But perhaps she was making an exception for this boy. She would have described what he was feeling now as adoration born of gratitude, not love, but it wasn't like he was trying to get into her pants. It said some really sad things about how rarely he'd been treated with consideration before, how rarely people had paid attention to what _he _wanted, but life was a bitch and humans were selfish bastards. "Try not to cry, you'll worry Suki," she said, and knew the real reason was that his tears, even if they were born of messed-up happiness, would hurt her. She already felt like there was a knifeblade lodged in her heart.

Yet it was a clean pain somehow, different from her self-hatred and loneliness born of Gendo's rejection. This boy loved her, and was going to die, and that was _wrong_. So it was right that she, that _someone, _ache and mourn on his behalf. The opposite of the way Gendo, the way no one had cared about her heartbreak and disgrace. Kaworu wasn't going to have to die alone and unloved, so she said, "You can call me mother, if you like." Because he didn't have one and she, she would be honored.

He was struck dumb for a long moment as red eyes looked up at her in wonder through long, pale eyelashes. The word, the concept was a foreign one to him, but even stranger was the idea that anyone would offer it to him when he wasn't even human.

She watched his heart break with happiness, with simple joy. A child's. A human's.

Ritsuko knew she'd be a lousy mother, but he wouldn't live long enough for her to fuck him up. All she had to do was be quiet and hold him.

Until he fell asleep with his head on her lap.

Until she verified that his heart had finally stopped beating.

The first order of business was to pick him up and put him somewhere out of sight of the road, so no one would call the cops and this quiet beach, his final resting place, wouldn't be swarmed by first cops and then probably NERV's angel body recovery/biohazard team. Fortunately there were enough rocks around that putting him behind one meant it wouldn't be easy to spot him from a boat, either.

Even though she made sure he could see the sunlit ocean, stretching out into the distance. As though that bright future was within his reach.

* * *

When Third Impact came for her it was with sandy arms in a white shirt, and moon-pale hair that smelled of the sea.

* * *

It was the same when Life came for her, except this time it wasn't with a smile full of promises but a heart full of worry that maybe she wouldn't want to return from Instrumentality, maybe she'd only let him think of her as his mother because it was a temporary thing, a brief comfort instead of a burden.

But he was proof that someone wanted her to live, someone treasured her individual identity, so she took his hand.

It wasn't the kind of love she had hoped for, but it was love, all the same.

* * *

"Um, Dr. Akagi?"

"Hey, wake up!"

Ritsuko groaned at the voices of the Ikari Brat and the Second Brat. "Kaworu?" Wasn't he here?

"Are you alright, Ritsuko?"

"The offer still stands." Hadn't he felt that while they were entwined in the sea of instrumentality? Or was that just her inner-him, the one who had represented proof that someone could love her, as flawed as she was?

"Mother." She felt him take her hand between both of his as she leaned up to cough some remaining LCL out of her lungs. Immersion in that stuff was absolutely disgusting.

"What about Suki?" was the next thing she asked, while wiping her eyes.

"He's fine. I was able to recall him too, since animals have a primitive consciousness."

"What about Misato?" the Ikari brat asked.

"What about Kaji?" the other one demanded.

"Kaji was killed by someone from NERV, and since there wasn't a vessel waiting to catch his soul, unlike me, he wasn't on this planet to be drawn into the instrumentality," Kaworu told them. "And I did look for Misato, since she's R-Mother's friend, but either she already left, she was never there or she didn't want me to find her."

"Since you're an angel." Ritsuko blinked her eyes open in time to see Asuka's scowl. "What about _my _mother?" the German girl demanded.

"The soul in your Eva? I can try. At least I will recognize her, even if she won't recognize me because her heart was shut away."

"While you piloted her. An _angel _piloting…"

"Shut up!" Ritsuko ordered the girl as she sat up. "Don't you dare insult him, you damn spoiled brat. Not when you helped defend NERV and Unit 01 long enough for Ikari and the Committee to do this!" Reduce everything and everyone to a barren, red-tinted world.

"Dr. Akagi…" Shinji said slowly. "They shot Misato."

"And Misato should have known what she was really working for, if she hadn't stuck her fingers in her ears in order to kill angels." That was cruel, but Ritsuko had suffered and Misato hadn't even _noticed, _so focused on her revenge. "You're too young to remember the wars after Second Impact. What it was like. Billions of lives, Ikari, and the extinction of the human race. But then, you never really cared about that, did you?" She looked at him contemptuously. "Too busy with your Oedipus complex." Pathetic.

Kaworu put a hand on her arm, reminding her that he was there, that he had feelings for Shinji because of the damned First Child.

"Well," she shouldn't waste time on these two anyway. "We are officially outside the bounds of the scenario. All organic matter was returned to the primordial soup, correct?" she asked Kaworu, who nodded.

"And you pulled me out, but that won't solve the food problem." Fortunately there weren't enough people breathing for there to be an oxygen problem anytime soon.

"He pulled out an animal before you," Asuka told her. "So at least we'll have meat."

"Don't look at Suki like that," Kaworu said, shielding the cat with his arms and glaring at the other former pilot. "I _am _a True Successor: I should be able to turn all this LCL into new life, but not right now."

"Why not?" Ritsuko wondered, trying to wring a as much as possible out of her clothes.

"Because human personalities are not evenly distributed through the mass. If I convert all of it I would be overwriting souls that haven't already chosen to give up their individual identities," which Kaworu thought was a damn stupid thing to choose, and if they wanted to be one with the universe, well, so was broccoli. "Reshaping small quantities into food will be safe, though."

"But what about the people who aren't here?" Shinji wondered.

_Now _he worried about them. "Three days," Ritsuko decided. "After that, if they're not coming, they're not coming." And the brave souls who had returned to life on their own shouldn't die for the sake of the uncaring masses.

But what did it say that the Ikari brat and the other one returned to life before she did? Well, Ritsuko wouldn't have considered herself an especially brave or worthy person anyway.

"Shouldn't we go look for someplace to sleep?" Shinji asked when it started to get dark.

"Nothing organic survived," Ritsuko reminded him. "No fabric, either natural or made from plastic, because plastic is made from oil which comes from _living things_." Or once-living, but it was still organic matter. "No grass, or topsoil. Sorry, but sand like this is as soft a bed as we're going to find."

"Right, you idiot," Asuka said as though she was the one to think of it. "Just hurry up and cook my dinner."

"Who said I was feeding you?" Kaworu wondered as he made sure the kindling he'd called up out of the LCL was dry enough to catch fire. "I'm the one who brought this food, and I don't like people who threaten to eat my cat and call my friend an idiot."

"And I don't like angels who wander into the girls' bathroom and try to tell me how to pilot my Eva!"

"Ahem," Ritsuko said, looking at Asuka with eyes that were clearly unamused by this bullshit. "Which one of you can adjust his sync ratio at will?" And which one had failed at piloting the instant Misato gave her enough rope to hang herself? "And I'm afraid I agree with Kaworu. You are a very rude young lady, and I don't tolerate cruelty to cats. I'm not Misato, and I have no reason to put up with your immature dramatics as a favor to Kaji. I don't approve of people who take advantage of others, either. You can start minding your manners tonight or you can start fending for yourself tomorrow. Rather pathetic, isn't it, when someone who graduated college doesn't know how to say please or thank you."

Normally Asuka sucked up to the adults around her, but she seemed to assume that no one was going to stick up for Shinji. Normally Ritsuko wouldn't have, true, but Kaworu had and now Ritsuko felt obligated to stick up for Kaworu. "Now shut your mouth and stop distracting Kaworu: it's already getting dark."

Kaworu's smile was as good as a, "Thank you, Mother." He wasn't used to people sticking up for him any more than Shinji was, it seemed. He knelt by the wood he'd made from the sea, and both the other pilots gasped when they saw an AT field appear in his hands. Kaworu frowned a little, focusing his attention, until the kindling finally caught fire.

"I'll take over from there," Ritsuko said, waving him aside. "Shinji, would you mind being in charge of the cooking?"

"No, Dr. Akagi." The boy looked surprised that anyone would ask, but Ritsuko was currently setting an example of how Asuka had better behave towards the others.

"Good, thank you." Ritsuko frowned. "It's a pity we're not on a hill, but at least anyone out there will be able to see the smoke for a couple more hours, and they'll see the light if they're close enough. Kaworu, I'll try to show you how to take care of a fire tonight so you can keep it going tomorrow while the rest of us look for an intact building close enough to the beach to be practical." Close enough to their only source of food, bedding, and even drinking water, since Kaworu could filter the LCl and salt out of the liquid.

It wasn't much like camping with Misato and Kaji. For one thing, Shinji and Asuka's teasing was more verbal abuse, not to mention one-sided, and they weren't having sex in the tents they didn't have. Asuka went so far as to designate one side of the fire the girls' side (No Perverts Allowed), which Ritsuko didn't care about because it was a warm night anyway and the fire was really just so they could have cooked food and a signal beacon for other… Not exactly _survivors_, but whatever. So she just formed sand into a shape that felt comfortable for her back and lay down after dinner. Kaworu slept on the side of her away from the fire, in case she had to get up in the night to tend it, and Shinji slept by Kaworu's other side because this put both of them and a bonfire between him and Asuka.

Maybe he was gay and Kaworu had a chance after all. Ritsuko hadn't been kidding about the Oedipus complex: that might very well be the only reason he'd been attracted to Rei, whose giant head might have seemed like it was staring at them if those eyes weren't so vacant.

When she woke up the next morning Kaworu was already up, trying to figure out how to milk a cow he must have pulled out of the LCL for Suki's sake. After that was accomplished and Shinji had everything he needed to make breakfast for them, Kaworu realized they needed hay for the cows to eat, and more logs for the fire, and ingredients for lunch, and so Ritsuko woke Asuka up to help her carry what Kaworu pulled out of the LCL that wasn't a living creature further up the beach, since dragging it would give the LCL a chance to eat away at it.

Chickens were next, and pulling up sheaves of wheat instead of regular grass for the cows gave them something to peck at.

Then Ritsuko had to break up a near fight about how "I did _not _bring them back to life just so that you could kill them!" and also banned Asuka from going hunting after they heard birdsong that Kaworu said he wasn't responsible for, because they didn't know how many animals would come back on their own and they needed a gene pool.

The next thing Kaworu pulled out of the LCL was Maya, because, "She was looking for you, Mother. She would have come out on her own, but this was faster."

Other people started arriving around noon, which Ritsuko was certain was because they were attracted by the smell of lunch, forcing Shinji to keep cooking and Kaworu to keep getting fish, potatoes, sharpened sticks for Shinji to jam into the sand and cook things on and such. That was when the inevitable, "How is he doing that?" questions started, although Ritsuko was able to derail some of them by telling various people to go see if they could find some salt, and work on expanding the fire so Shinji had more cooking space (or help cook, if they knew how to cook like this).

At least until the returned soldiers, who had gotten organized a fair distance away after recognizing the Second, Third and Fifth Children in addition to Dr. Akagi, stormed the beach. Even without much in the way of weapons but rocks and metal poles, there wasn't much the former NERV-employee and civilian group could do about an organized force's surprise attack.

Not, at least, without Kaworu raising his AT field.

At that point it was a standoff, with Shinji hiding half-behind Kaworu, Asuka standing in front of everyone with her fists clenched (the girl was brave, you had to give her that), Maya next to Ritsuko and…

Amidst the cries of shock, alarm and dismay as others realized that they were caught between an angel and an army that had been slaughtering them and might not see Third Impact as a reason to _stop _(quite the contrary), Kaworu realized that he couldn't see, "Suki!" A half-panicked, levitating and glowing angel didn't help anyone keep their composure, but at least the soldiers appeared to be focused on him instead of clubbing down the fleeing civilians and NERV personnel.

Ritsuko knew, with perception honed by years of cat ownership, that Suki had to be in the middle of the soldiers trying to make friends with one of them.

Yes, she was right, she knew as Kaworu dived. There was a shout to get away when he moved in, probably so that they could rush him, but the order wasn't given when they saw that he'd grabbed a small cat and curled around it, intending to shelter the small creature with his body as well as his AT field.

These were soldiers: they weren't going to hesitate because he looked like a human or had a cat, not when he was an angel. Dr. Akagi still cried, "Stop!" and prayed to the gods of her ancestors that some kind of officer had returned, that there was someone who was paid to think in that mob. She didn't know what Tabr-what Kaworu would do if he thought she, Shinji or Suki were threatened. He had his AT field, so he shouldn't need to use lethal force to protect himself… right?

"Dr. Ritsuko Akagi?" a voice said.

"Yes?" she said, straightening. She couldn't make out the speaker, but it would make sense for him to stay behind cover, out of sight of an angel.

"The information you gave us didn't say anything about those white Evas, and our briefing said the Fifth Child was dead."

"Those were sent by SEELE. I worked for NERV, I didn't know anything about what they had planned. As for Kaworu, he did die. I gave him the poison he took and examined his body myself. Unfortunately, SEELE had a replica of the dummy plug system waiting to capture his soul so they could use it without having to worry about an inconvenient mind or memories. Kaworu was their version of the First Child."

"You betrayed us?" Asuka demanded angrily.

"I betrayed Gendo Ikari's plans to destroy the world! You're the one who fought to defend that bastard!"

"They were shooting civilians, Ritsuko," Shinji said quietly. "Misato, I think Misato died dragging me to safety. If they gave us a chance to surrender, my father didn't tell any of us about it, and they were shooting even people who had their hands up and were trying to surrender."

"The Committee warned us that we had very little time left before Commander Ikari used one of the Evas and pilots to trigger Third Impact. At first we thought the white Evas were being sent as reinforcements to take down the rogue Evas." Then they'd seen the brutality with which Unit 02 was _devoured_, and that strange… there wasn't any word for it but ritual involving the captured Unit 01. "You say he took poison?"

"I did," Kaworu said, looking around him with red eyes that were a mix of worried and defiant. "Since I refused to cause Third Impact and I knew that SEELE would have me hunted down and killed for defying them. They had me created and tried to control my entire life: I didn't want them to dictate my death, too. But even that was a trap." Damn it! He tried not to let his anger at those old men show too much, lest these other Lilim take it as hatred of their race or a threat. "Dr. Akagi was kind enough to stay with me until I fell asleep, and adopt Suki. I won't let you hurt her, or Shinji."

He would have looked more threatening and less like a wet cat himself if his cat wasn't licking his fingers and purring. Since not looking threatening was safer for all of them, though…

"The Committee created you?"

"Yes, using the DNA of your sort of human. So I'm half-Lilim," he said, raising his chin. "I never wanted instrumentality and it was the Thirteenth Angel that caused Third Impact: Homo Sapiens, the Children of Lilith. You, or the old men anyway. I don't know what happened exactly because I didn't come back to myself until I was already in the Black Egg, but I meant to die and stay dead so they couldn't use me. It was the old men who wouldn't let me be free, but now they're gone, or I hope so, I'm free and I want to live. Shinji, Suki and Ritsuko too. The bodies of Adam and Lilith are gone, and without them it shouldn't be possible to set off another Impact anyway. So what are you going to do? Plants don't have enough of a consciousness to bring themselves back to life: unless the First Child returns I'm the only one who can fix this planet so you Lilim can survive. If you kill Shinji or Ritsuko, or Suki, if you're all like the old men, like SEELE," his voice wavered with grief at the thought of losing his two precious people, "I won't. If you're willing to behave instead of hurting people you can even stay here and I'll get food for you too, as long as Mo-Ritsuko and the others don't mind."

"I'm not cooking for them," Shinji said, fists clenched. Hell no! "Those bastards killed Misato!"

"Why should you?" Kaworu wondered, starting to walk back towards them, still holding Suki. "Unless it was like how you Lilim are more willing to touch people when you're angry. They wanted to stop this," he reminded Shinji, waving at the red sea and the giant head. "I know you wanted to kill Gendo Ikari, and someone should have killed the old men years ago. I…" He hesitated, standing next to Ritsuko. "I don't know how to deal with people, you're all so weird. I wasn't allowed out until the old men sent me to NERV. Is this how I should handle it, or should I stop talking?" Was he getting her in trouble, making things worse?

He felt better when Ritsuko ruffled his silver hair, and it put a little smile on his lips that she at least was willing to touch him. Wanted him to live. Even if what she said was, "Don't ask me, I'm not good with people either." That was Kaji. Up until one of them killed him, anyway. "But whatever happens, it's up to them. You're a good kid, so I know you won't pick a fight with them or give them an actual reason to try to kill you. You can't help the way those bastards made you, and it's saving all of us from starving to death right now." She looked up at the soldiers. "So, are you going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, or let him prove that he's no one's enemy but the bastards who did this to our planet?"

As more and more people came out of the red sea and converged on the one area they could find real food, the next two days had Kaworu busy standing in the surf, calling everything edible out of it he could think of and knew well enough to make out of LCL while Ritsuko tried to hold off people who wanted him to pull out their friends and family when it would take him too long to try to find them and explain that it wasn't Kaworu's fault that either the people who stayed in there were going to be overwritten or the people who had come out were going to starve to death.

She hoped it helped that Kaworu was a hard worker, that he started when he woke up and didn't stop until he was practically staggering and couldn't think well enough to think of anything. That first day, it was Shinji that helped him get far enough up the beach that he wouldn't get soaked when he lay down to sleep and then went to find Ritsuko.

It fell to her to look after Suki as well as trying to deal with angry people who wanted a target they could take their anger out on, and that was exactly why she wasn't letting the cat out of her sight. She didn't trust a beach full of angry and hungry people with something so important to an angel, much less something that was made out of meat. Humans had done enough horrible things to innocent cats throughout history, and Kaworu would be devastated if something happened to Suki because of him.

Somehow, the world forgot that it hated them both (it probably helped that it was a new world) and no one tried (very hard) to kill either of them after that, or no one who got past the military bodyguards Kaworu eventually got first as their only food source and then as the one who fixed the planet. Eventually they had a house by the sea, with a third bedroom for Shinji, a lab for her and a practice room for the boys.

Not to mention fewer cats than she had expected. Kaworu had managed to make a friend his own age in Shinji. Although Ritsuko wasn't sure she exactly approved of having an Ikari under her roof, even if it was instead of equivalent mass in cats.

Perhaps Shinji's presence was proof that Kaworu still had a fondness for taking in strays.

* * *

_And now it's done. I'm not promising continuations of any of the others, mind._


	8. System Restore

Tired after the battle, Shinji somehow managed to fall asleep in Kaworu's bed. The other pilot was already asleep: maybe that was part of why he felt safe enough to do it even though Kaworu's so weird Shinji has no idea what he'll do. He didn't turn off the lights, though.

No, the real reason for both things was that he didn't care enough.

Soft touches on his face woke him: by some miracle he was conscious enough of where he was to groan and bat at the air, wishing Kaworu would knock it off. His hand met something that felt like a feather duster, but when he grasped it there was warmth at the core of the feathers, they were arranged like a wing instead of sticking out in all directions and Kaworu made his own noise of complaint at the rough handling as the, the wing twitched in Shinji's hand, not quite wrenching away from him because that would end up with feathers getting torn out, but definitely indicating he wanted Shinji to let go since that hold wasn't comfortable at all.

It was when the, the wing thrashed _up _into Shinji's hand, buffeting him like a swan would in order to force him to let go that Shinji woke up the rest of the way, enough to open his eyes and see layers of white, not soft down but long pinions adorning huge wings that were, yes, like a swan's. Except swans didn't have three pairs of them, and swan wings weren't attached to human backs. Not without surgery anyway, Shinji thought, grasping at straws, and they certainly hadn't been there when he went to sleep.

The wings, _Kaworu's _wings, settled over him again while he was staring. They were a warm weight, inescapably real. They made Shinji feel like he was hidden away, like they were arching over him protectively, huge and thick and warm.

They were still an angel's wings, a monster's wings and this explained why Kaworu was so weird, why he didn't understand how humans acted and acted as though Shinji was the weird one.

He could hear Kaworu's quiet breathing and that meant now was his chance to escape, except when he tried to slide off the bed, the wings closed around him and pushed him closer to Kaworu. Strong. Being hit by a swan's wing could break a man's arm.

Like the arms that encircled him now, Kaworu making a questioning noise and waking up, just a little, after Shinji came in contact with him. Shinji ended up with Kaworu's chest lying at an angle on top of his, the other guy's-the angel's arms wrapped around him, his face against Shinji's neck. From the sound he made as he settled, from how he breathed against Shinji's neck, Kaworu found it very comfortable.

It made Shinji's skin crawl. Caught. These were the arms, the hands that snapped a kitten's neck. If he tried to break free, if Kaworu realized Shinji saw the wings and knew he was an angel? He lay there, desperately trying to figure out how to escape until Kaworu pressed his lips to the side of Shinji's neck.

"Get _off _me!" Shinji almost roared, almost meeped, face red with anger and embarrassment as his hands found the strength to push Kaworu up almost viciously despite the heavy weight of the wings. He ran for it, only to feel long pinion feathers press at the front of his legs, tripping him up a moment before Kaworu tackled him.

Shinji wasn't sure how he'd managed to roll so that he was facing up, looking into red eyes, but both of them were frozen there for a moment, breathing heavily, Kaworu crouched over him.

The angel recovered first.

"Now that you know, the old men would have me kill you," Kaworu said, hands on Shinji's neck, body holding him down. "However, they told me to observe you, so they must have some plans for you. Well, I'm dead soon either way, so what should I choose to do with you?"

"Th-they know I'm here," Shinji told the angel, glaring.

"Do they?" Kaworu wondered. "If something 'happened' to the security camera footage? All I would have to do is say that you left to go back to where you live. The old men wouldn't let them interrogate me too harshly. Especially since I would be the last pilot left." They would need him.

His right hand slid up to gently trace, to caress the other boy's cheek, although his left still grasped Shinji's throat. "I wonder what it would be like to be loved by something like you? You're wrong, though: the difference between us isn't that I'm an angel. We're both angels. You Lilim are just pathetically weak. You have to create and enslave children of Adam to get anything done. Like the Evas. Like me." Resentment glowed, a coal at the heart of red eyes. "The old men are the ones who made me grow these, to show me off. Their tame angel, the one who will die to give _them _what they want, everything according to those Lilim and their scenario. Like the Evas, bound and tortured into human form and obedience. You Lilim are the real monsters: even the old men admit it. Would you try to bind and control me if you loved me? You_ are_ just another Lilim," he seemed pained as he admitted that, because some part of him, some part of Rei that lived in him, still cared for Shinji. "But what if we were the same? I _am _supposed to be able to purify the Lilim..."

He leaned down and tried to kiss Shinji, who clamped his lips together as hard as he could. Kaworu still caressed his lips wetly with tongue and an open mouth, hunger, desire and a bit of coaxing. "Damn them both for making me want you," he whispered. "But I want you. I've never wanted anything this much, not even to live."

Shinji shuddered, whether it be with fear or in reaction to the longing in the other boy's voice as his mouth lowered to Shinji's neck, mouthing and licking. Tasting Shinji's flesh, and Shinji shivered again when he heard Kaworu moan, felt that other body shudder with desire and heard those feathers rustle as Kaworu pressed his hips against Shinji's.

Then the angel stopped, tilted his head up to speak softly into Shinji's ear. "It hurts that you're rejecting me like this. The pain in my chest, like something's squeezing me to death. I don't hate you, not like the old men who sent me here. I love you. What would it take for you to return these feelings? If I was a girl? If we were the same?"

Was Kaworu begging? "I would become a girl for you. I can, you know, just like I grew these wings. Male or female, it doesn't matter to me. I just want… Someone to ask to hold my hand. Someone to want to stay with me because they like me instead of because they hate me. Someone to remember me when I die."

He pulled back to look into Shinji's eyes in the darkness, the white room tinted vaguely blue by the light from the TV screen, paused on the old romance Shinji had been watching before he fell asleep. "Won't you say anything?"

Shinji just looked away.

"Answer me," Kaworu said, voice harsh. "Answer me!" His fist hit the floor next to Shinji's head, almost close enough to hit strands of brown hair lying on the carpet, and Shinji felt a flash of triumph not at the anger but at the trace of helplessness.

"Why? You're just going to do what you want and exploit me anyway. Everyone always does. You might be an angel, but you're no different."

"Don't you see?" he asked, and he was pleading this time. "We're the same. They've always exploited me too from the moment they forced me to be born. Made me look like this, like a little cherub, kept me in a tube when they didn't have any use for me until they sent me here to die. I… Please, _look at me_. _See _me."

"See what? Someone who killed an innocent cat?" See a monster with white hair and white wings the color of death?

"I gave it mercy. Haven't you ever wanted mercy? For someone to make it so that you wouldn't have to suffer anymore, for someone to care about your pain enough to act, to grant you the peace and freedom of death?" Kaworu's voice was still full of longing, longing not just for Shinji or for Shinji to understand, but for the final mercy of which he spoke. "The old men won't let me live, so the manner of my death is the only real choice I have. I've always wished…" Shinji heard Kaworu swallow. "That someone would understand, would grant me mercy for my sake, not murder me for refusing to murder all of you or crush me like an enemy when I don't want to be, I only wanted to come here because I have more freedom here, they can't put me back in a tube when I have to pretend I'm human. So I can pretend I'm a person well enough to fool the ones at NERV who don't already know. Your father and Dr. Akagi already know."

His father… damn him. So Shinji wouldn't get any help if he ran out there to reveal Kaworu, not unless he could find Misato, and he couldn't use the Eva without his father's permission, he'd just say Shinji was dreaming, or not even bother to give an explanation, just give Shinji a look to remind everyone that Shinji and his opinion were less than dirt, so why were they even bothering to listen?

As bitter helplessness engulfed Shinji and Kaworu looked down at him with pleading, desperate eyes slowly yielding to his own despair, Shinji's phone rang.

* * *

Shinji was too overjoyed to hear that Rei survived to care that Kaworu had come with him, was shadowing him to make sure Shinji didn't reveal his secret.

Joy that was replaced by shock and heartbreak when she didn't remember him, didn't remember _anything_.

"I think, perhaps I am the third," was all she said, turning back to the window where Shinji saw her reflection, eyes dark and full of something disturbing. Resentment? Anger?

"The third?" Kaworu finally spoke, startled. "The third vessel?" As Rei turned to face him, looking startled herself, he continued, "I'm the second myself, but how is that possible? You died, and there wasn't…" He seemed to finally remember the audience, not just Shinji but Misato. He frowned at them, but told Rei, "I should be able to return some of what you lost to you."

"Why?" she asked him. Not how, but why would he do that?

"Because we are the same," he told her. "Even if now the reason we aren't the same is reversed… Losing my identity, that would be a worse fate than death. Death is freedom for the soul, but to have it caught and caged like this…" Pity, revulsion and anger, anger for her sake mingled in his red eyes. "In return, I want to know how they did this to you."

"And if it can be done to you," Rei said, finally looking at one of them instead of being lost in her own dark thoughts. "Agreed." Distrust mingled with hope and curiosity, but at least there was hope. She walked towards Kaworu, who offered her his hand.

"Wait," Misato said. "What are you two talking about?"

"You are not cleared for that information," was Rei's calm and more than a little contemptuous response, as though neither Misato nor Shinji were anything but nonentities to her. Not even worthy of a moment's contemplation.

It was a horribly lonely feeling, to see Rei standing with Ka-the angel instead of him. Even holding his hand.

That was when Shinji was struck by the realization that _they were alike_. That pale skin, red and red-orange eyes, colors of hair that just weren't normal: he'd gotten used to Rei's aberrant appearance, enough Kaworu's more normal one (by comparison) hadn't really registered, but if they weren't freak mutations? What if they were perfectly normal members of some other kind?

What if Rei wasn't human, wasn't like him? What if she and Kaworu…

Standing like that, they matched. With Kaworu looking like he wanted to protect her from their questions, wanted to get her away from them so she could get her memories back, with Rei looking at them as though they were just obstacles to her and Kaworu going away together?

Misato's eyes were also flashing back and forth between them, as though she was making some similar connection and didn't like the implications. What did it mean that Kaworu was like Rei when Kaji had dug up some information on just how strange Rei was? How could Rei have survived that explosion? Or had she? Vessel… was this a new body? How was that possible?

"Please excuse us," Kaworu said, and tugged at Rei's hand.

Seeing the two of them running off together, Shinji had to follow. "Rei, Kaworu, wait!"

"Why is he here with us?" Rei asked after Kaworu waited for Shinji to get inside his room before closing the door.

"Because he was important to you, and you passed those feelings on to me when Armisael connected us," Kaworu told her. "Anyway, I want him to see this."

So Shinji couldn't deny that Rei was an angel? So he had to accept Kaworu if he was going to accept Rei?

Rei seemed willing to accept his presence on Kaworu's word, which still hurt. Even if she didn't remember Shinji, she trusted Kaworu more than him? Because they were of the same kind? Was that really an insurmountable gap?

Shinji ignored the inner voice that said he'd wanted it to be an insurmountable gap when it was _Kaworu_ wanting acceptance instead of Shinji.

Kaworu took Rei's other hand, then remembered that, "Damn, they'll detect the AT field."

Rei looked disappointed, but willing to withdraw her hands from his. Kaworu squeezed them instead. "No. You shouldn't have your identity taken away by the Lilim, and I need to know if they have some way to keep death from granting me my freedom. Even if it hastens my death, I don't mind doing this."

"Thank you," Rei said, nodding her head briefly.

He nodded in answer, closing his eyes and leaning forward. Rei did as well so their foreheads touched as first Kaworu, then Rei began to glow softly with the same color of light, a pale, unearthly blue-grey.

Several long seconds passed without anything happening, until Kaworu's wings sprouted from his back, ruining another shirt – he'd tossed this one on to follow Shinji. From the way they flared and flexed, he seemed alarmed somehow. If angels had emotions like that (Rei did). It was Rei that took a step forward towards him so he could wrap those wings around her protectively (like Shinji?), shuddering. What had he seen in Rei's memories? What happened to Rei?

"I'll destroy those things!" Kaworu said angrily as he opened his eyes, wrapping his arms around her as well. "Those damn Lilim…"

Rei looked up at him blushing softly, looking vulnerable and slowly putting her arms around him as well, because she missed him holding her hands. "I can't survive on my own either. I require those medications, too."

He promised her that "I'll destroy those vessels before I search for mine."

"Let me come with you. I'll destroy the two pieces of my first vessel's body, and the Commander has what's left of Adam's body: if we find where SEELE is making and keeping your clones, we can both be free. It's better than being used to grant _their _wishes and killing everyone, including Shinji, so _he _can be with his wife and your old men can live forever," she said, almost pleading.

"They only sensed _my_ AT field. _You_ still have a chance to live_," _he said, frowning. "Don't you _dare _throw that away. If you survive as yourself, then you can free me if I fall and they still manage to capture my soul."

That made Rei hesitate, although Shinji could see that she dearly wanted to argue as Kaworu pulled back far enough to shake his head like a dog trying to get itself dry, silver hair in its usual disarray. His wings also moved, feathers ruffling up and then pressing down again in a way that did absolutely nothing to reduce the total amount of disorder. "But if we both die, then…" Kaworu's red eyes focused on Shinji.

And he smirked.

* * *

Misato knocked twice, her hand stopping before she rapped on the door a third time. Instead she lowered it to the knob and said "I'm coming in."

Shinji was lying in his bed staring up at the ceiling, listening to his music player: well, that was about what she'd expected. "They finally killed the Twelfth Angel," she told him. "The Committee finished putting the Mass Production series through production already, and they brought him down over Switzerland. They're sending the Evas here next."

"So?" Shinji asked, sounding bored. "They can't want me as a pilot. My Eva's already been destroyed."

"I just thought you would like to know that your father's been avenged?" Misato managed to say, knowing it was pathetic even as she finished saying it.

"He shot himself, after my Eva was destroyed," Shinji reminded her. "I'm glad Kaworu didn't kill him. I'd have to thank him for that."

"Shinji… Don't say that."

"I'm not you, Misato, and _he _was nothing like your father. He didn't die to save me, he died because it was the only way to be with my mother again. I was never anything but a hated existence to him, since I took her attention away." Shinji laughed, but there wasn't any happiness in it. "You're lucky, Misato. Having someone who cared that much about you… Maybe my mother did. Maybe she just wanted to be a God. Either way, she left me to _him_." He finally rolled over to look at her. "So who's taking the blame for Kaworu?"

"Officially, the real Kaworu Nagisa never reached us. We should have realized it was suspicious that you just found him wandering around in the ruins." Even though his records had been scrubbed, the Committee had produced footage of a very normal looking boy, with lighter brown hair than Shinji and green eyes. "The Twelfth Angel either possessed the real one after killing his escort or just killed him and took human form. Either way, we're taking the blame for the negligence." It wasn't as though Misato hadn't _tried_ to investigate him. Speaking of which, "Shinji, even if you aren't unhappy about your father, Rei is."

That made him roll back over onto his back: that was almost as stupid a thing to say as praising Shinji in front of Asuka.

"Yes, I know, but she's upset and you're her only friend."

* * *

When Shinji finally left Misato sighed, putting down her beer and picking up Pen Pen. Walking out onto the balcony, she looked across the ruined city. Only twelve hours until SEELE's Evas got here, and there were already signs the change in management was going to be thorough. They wanted custody of Rei, and Shinji: was it too dangerous for Misato to stay here, with the army moving around the city's perimeter now that the committee was disregarding international law about the number of Evas per country?

Something was about to happen.

Before, Shinji would have been happy Rei was hugging him. Unfortunately…

Well, fortunately, "He's not dead." Which meant Shinji had a chance to kill Kaworu himself.

"I know," Rei said, or rather sniffled, with tears in her alien eyes. "They must have used a dummy system for those Evas, and five of them survived intact. They're coming here, so I have a chance." To rescue his new vessel in less than half a day. "But he, he didn't want to fall to them." To monstrosities made of his own flesh, with his own face. Puppets, like what they wanted to make of him.

"I know." And Shinji did. He should hate her for letting Kaworu do this to him, but that was hard now. To hate either of them, as wrong as it was for Kaworu to do this to him and he should have _known _that.

* * *

Shinji wasn't surprised at all when Rei attacked the winged white Evas. She didn't scream a battle cry, but even though this wasn't very good picture quality he could almost feel the anger radiating off her in waves, read it in the AT field she called up to smash them as Misato and Fuyutsuki gave more orders around him. He was useless baggage once again: just here for Misato to keep him as safe as she could without his Eva.

That wasn't a surprise either, but it certainly was surprising when one of them _swallowed _Rei and she didn't burst out. Did it have fangs or some means of capturing Lilith's host?

That was when Asuka woke up, and _that _fight was painfully short.

The last two MP Evas pulled apart the roof of the command room, and Shinji knew enough to push Misato away when one grabbed at him. He was stuck in its mouth _(ew) _and if he didn't know they needed him intact for this, since merging with Unit 01 meant his recreated flesh was the only remaining flesh of Lilith?

They also needed his mind, and he screamed as tendrils like Armisael's stabbed into his brain.

_? _

A kneeling figure appeared before his mind on an infinite white plain: a direct connection was made and Shinji could feel knowledge and memory pour into the faceless being before him until wings sprouted from its, his back.

And that was when it all went to hell, from SEELE's perspective.

From Shinji's, too, since the MP Eva's detonation left him falling surrounded by chunky, moist slimy dead flesh. "Kaworu, I'm going to kill you!" he yelled once he had breath again, eyes clamped shut as he kept trying to push himself out of the Eva's remains so that the wind couldn't tear at his eyes.

"Thank you," he heard from right next to him, a moment before Kaworu managed to match velocities with him well enough to catch Shinji's flailing arm without just ripping it off.

Then Shinji got dropped again an instant later, or rather hurled up into the air so that it would take him longer to fall back down as Kaworu dodged a lance and took off the head of the remaining Eva, hopefully not just guessing that cut wouldn't hit Rei.

"And what are you thanking me for?" Shinji demanded when Kaworu grabbed him again, Rei catching his other arm. "I didn't ask to be used as your stupid recovery drive!" Two sets of angel-human-whatever memories jammed into his head, so that if/when someone used him to trigger instrumentality, the souls of Rei and Kaworu (key ingredients, the souls of Lilith and Adam) could use what was in his brain to remember who _they _were.

Kaworu hated that Armisael did that to him, put Rei's emotions into him and set him up to have Shinji break his heart when that was the _last _thing the boy under a death sentence needed, and then he turned right around and did it to Shinji? For Rei's sake, too, because Shinji could restore her memories if Kaworu died and they made another clone of Rei, but…

He was still _pissed_, because it was not right to mess around with people's identities like that, and it was all three sets of memories in his head that told him that.

And it didn't matter that Kaworu was hugging him and praising his bravery (for running _towards _the Eva), and that Rei loved him too because of Kaworu's feelings that were hers, it was still… They were both _stupid_. And _weird_.

(But they grew up in tanks, he knew now, and knew how starved they were for touch, Rei without knowing it and Kaworu only half-knowing it.

(He remembered Kaworu's wish for someone to understand and love him, and it merged so seamlessly with Shinji's own, with the wish both of them awoke in Rei.

(It didn't help his ability to resist that Rei was already taking off his pants – neither she nor Kaworu were socialized enough to care about human mores - and he knew how they wanted to touch and touch, and kiss, and protect him as well.)

Kaworu and Shinji's memories both contained songs about the power of love, but it was Kaworu who knew that 'virtue' was just a word meaning 'force.' Love was nothing but a very powerful force, so he could blame that pressure for the way his fingernails were digging deep into Kaworu's wings in a way that made the angel cry out first with fright, like a pinned bird, and then because having the knots rubbed out of unnatural muscles so terribly prone to them felt paralyzingly _good_.

Well, Shinji thought as Rei perched between his legs, wings fanning out hopefully, at least he knew how to make Kaworu instantly stop doing weird things from now on.


	9. A World Just For Me

_Aside from making it fit with the anime, I had to wonder why in the manga Armisael tried to get Rei to merge with her and ignored Kaworu, when he has Adam's soul and the angels were supposed to try to merge with Adam. _

_Possible reasons: underage/not fertile yet, since fifteen is 'born five minutes ago' in geological time, or they're just pissed off by the whole raping their father thing and don't want anything to do with the product of it. _

_However, he still is a seed, and a seed of life instead of wisdom, so if they really did despise him because of how he was born? Notice that Rei gets asked nicely to merge with Armisael, while Arael mind-rapes Asuka. It's possibly that Armisael's nicer than her sister, but it's also possible that the rules angels follow/their moral code (like waiting their turns to go after Adam and try to become the new god) mandate respect for some (and seeds have godlike power), while weak enemy wisdomlings can suck it. Think about castes in a lot of human societies, how someone who was a good person by that society's standards could be absolutely respectful to one person and treat another like less than dirt and not see anything wrong with this picture. _

_Manga!Kaworu is fun to abuse, and he is an Eva pilot. When the ingredients for Third Impact are a seed's soul (in him), a seed's flesh (in the eva) & an angel? Is mind rape still mind rape instead of rape-rape when if successful it would result in children? _

* * *

"Won't you become one with me?" the angel with Rei's face asked again, kneeling on the endless watery plain within her mind. "All of the darkness inside you… it's the only way you'll ever have that Lilim you want."

Rei raised her head: something had changed. Instead of sensing only loneliness (so like her own) from the angel, sensing the desire for someone, anyone, to accept her that was present in Rei as well, now the angel's attention was divided.

Alarm flashed through her as she felt predatory triumph, and the kind of cruelty that must have been there in this angel's sister, when it did that to Asuka's mind. So far, this angel had tried to convince her with words instead of forcing her. Some of those words were cruel truths, yes, but Rei had been relieved enough on some level when she felt that this angel was like her instead of simply an enemy that she forgot what it meant that it was like her.

When Rei was capable of hating Asuka, of being cruel to Shinji for the crime of sitting by Asuka's bed and hoping she recovered?

She turned her mental head, following the angel's gaze to see another figure appear in this place, rising out of the LCL beneath them. No, dragged up, forced to appear here. The other pilot, the other one like her: his Eva had also been trapped and infected.

He wasn't struggling: red eyes looked annoyed instead of afraid, and he had the air of someone who was holding himself back instead of someone who was helpless the way Rei was in the angel's grasp.

"This is your last chance, Lilith," the angel told her, smirking at Rei with her own face. "Two seeds within my grasp? If I merge with him instead, you and your children will be overwritten instead of becoming one with us." At least there was a trace of pity there, a bit of mercy for the black seed.

"I refuse," Kaworu said shortly, climbing to his feet on the unreal surface and folding his arms.

Within this place, all three of them were connected enough now that Rei felt the angel's smile on her own lips, felt the twitch of will that altered the tentacles assaulting his body, no longer keeping the intrusion from being painful but instead making him _scream_.

Rei, for some reason Rei (Lilith), deserved a choice. It was her prerogative whether or not to accept this angel, merge with it and let it become the core of this world's new god. But Kaworu?

"_Like Asuka,_" Rei thought. "_She's treating him like Asuka." _As soon as that thought crossed hertheir mind, she knew it wasn't that.

A flash of Arael's memory that was now Armisael's, a vision of an obstacle that had no right to stand in her way: it wasn't the Lilim's turn yet, so trying to stop her was cheating. Those who refused to play by the rules were not protected by them. So Asuka was worthy of contempt instead of consideration, _should _be broken and forced aside so she couldn't repeat this crime, but Kaworu…

To Armisael, Kaworu's very _existence_ was a crime. She wasn't just willing to break him the way Arael had Asuka.

She _wanted _to.

"She wanted him to refuse," Rei said both aloud and inside her mind as Kaworu's screams came from her Eva's speakers, echoing inside their shared mental space. "She doesn't want there to be anything of his self left when they become one, so she doesn't have to…" Wasn't contaminated by the thing born of the rape of her father by the Lilim.

Lilith's host could feel Kaworu's struggle to hold his sister off while holding his AT field back as her own (no, he must not reveal himself now, not when there was time left!) as she reached for the modal switch.

She couldn't let Armisael merge with him, not when the reason Kaworu was like her was that he was born of Adam. If Armisael merged with him, an angel spawned of the white seed with a white seed, then instead of being absorbed and uploaded, all the minds on this planet born of Lilith would be overwritten.

Shinji, Commander Ikari: they would all die.

Rei's hand reached the switch without Armisael noticing Rei's intentions, too focused on Kaworu and the approach of Shinji's Eva, but was it too late? Armisael was now in Kaworu's mind instead of just Rei's: inverting the Eva's AT field would divide her and reduce her power, but it wouldn't kill her. It wouldn't even be enough to stop her if Kaworu didn't fight back.

She didn't even need to say it now, not with Armisael tangled within them both. Just as she'd felt Armisael's loneliness she could now feel Kaworu's (both of them, so like her own) and the knowledge of how the people here hated angels, how Misato and Shinji would loathe him for being one of the enemy that had taken people from them, and, "_This feeling… It's my feeling_." Not just so alike, the way the two of them were so alike: what she sensed from Kaworu now was _her _feeling. _Her _desire to hold Shinji's hand, to have him stay with her instead of waiting by Asuka's bed. Her desire to be loved, even though she was an angel and knowledge that even though there wasn't room in Gendo's heart for anyone else, Shinji was like Gendo. Shinji could grant her wish.

The same wish Kaworu had, that he hadn't even been aware of until now. He, he really was like her. Before he hadn't known that it was possible for someone to exist who could grant that wish, but now his heart had seized on the hope offered by her own hopes, her own knowledge of Shinji.

"Detecting another AT field! It's coming from inside Unit 00's entry plug!"

Rei winced to hear those words, even as she pulled all of the angel out of Kaworu as best she could, using the angel's desire to be with a seed to her advantage. "_Come to me_," Rei told the other with her face. "_We'll go together_."

Modal switch, the Eva's AT field pressing the two of them together, Armisael's hatred of Kaworu and hope that Rei would accept her tangling with Rei's wish that Shinji would accept her, her desire to protect him. Shards of Kaworu's despair, ripped out of him with the angel made her frown with worry: was it too late? Was he too damaged to carry out her wishes?

Her hand still reached for the self-destruct, ignoring Shinji's words, Misato's order to give her an explanation. She didn't want to explain, she didn't want to see Shinji's face when he realized that she was an angel all along.

She'd rather die than have him hate her, lose all hope of ever having someone for her.

So she did.

* * *

_Shouldn't exist._

_Shouldn't exist._

_You have no right to exist. _

_That is simple truth._

_A monster in the eyes of your kin and even the Lilim that made you, when your birth stole so many lives and souls. _

_You shouldn't exist and can't exist. You're just a tool to let someone obtain godhood: you think you can refuse your purpose? You know you can't survive, but you should know that even your death isn't yours to choose. _

_Your identity? What right do you have to value it, to hold on to it so selfishly, when it exists to be surrendered to a greater power, to something more worthy? What right do you have to possess an identity in the first place, when making 'you' from the soul and body of our father destroyed _his _identity and those of billions of the hosts of Lilim? _

_The sooner you surrender the power of your soul and cease to exist the better. That which is most precious to you? The only thing you have? _

_Your self is trash, and your death was never yours. I will break it now, I will take it from you now._

And she had: he'd felt her breaking his mind wide open as his body thrashed and cried out, just like what he'd watched Arael do to Asuka, but the lance was gone and Rei was trapped with him. No one would come and save him.

Especially if they knew he was an angel.

The light of his soul: it was what Armisael _wanted_, his own sister clawing at his mind, trying to gain purchase, trying to violate the absolute territory that must not be breached.

He couldn't keep her out: her words, thoughts, feelings were spikes, breaking him open because they were _true_ and they made him want someone, anyone. Made him want the pain of this accursed existence to stop and she, she wanted to give him oblivion.

Eventually.

He couldn't keep her out or Rei out, and who knew what Ikari's angel would find in his mind. SEELE would be _furious_, and he'd thought his last days would be his own time, his only freedom. Would even they be taken from him? Would he never have any freedom at all? Was there nothing that was truly his?

Not his body SEELE made, not his soul that was Adam's, not his life that was under the control of the Lilim, not his destiny that was laid out for him, and now Armisael would take everything from him, even his death. He wouldn't even be able to die as himself, not if he was reduced to nothing but a part of her!

Longing grew in him, made the tears he'd begun to shed when Armisael connected him to Rei come harder and faster, an undignified, disgusting blubbering that made him curl up with shame as well as the futile wish to hide, to escape from Armisael's righteous contempt for all he was, her thoughts smashing at him, pounding him to dust and nothingness.

SEELE had trained him to fight angels. Unlike Rei he knew much of how to use his AT field and other powers, but Armisael was billions of years old, even if she'd spent that time asleep. As a seed he had the raw power, but all of it was stolen strength and he was young, weak, an insignificant thing that should not be, even as he shook his head, trying to deny that reality, screaming, "No!" as Rei joined Armisael, reaching into his mind not to free him but to reshape him to _her _will, make him love Shinji as she couldn't, make him protect the Lilim after she was gone even if it meant revealing himself, regardless of what _he _wanted to do.

No matter how much he was hurt in the process, when she'd made him care (made him realize he cared) about the Lilim and their rejection of him. Even SEELE rejected him, for all they praised him. They wanted an angel that would grant them godhood, but they'd kill the boy who just wanted to live, and despise him for betraying them when he'd never agreed to any of it, never asked for this!

There was no one and nothing that would accept him. That would help him no matter how he begged for it: his weakness only invited them to use him.

Kaworu screamed as Armisael's last assault burned through him, the angel putting the last of her strength not into resisting Rei but into hurting her 'younger brother.' Even the other angels… He was even a monster and a tool to his own kind.

He screamed long past the point a Lilim would have lost their voice. He screamed until Ritsuko put a sedative in the entry plug's LCL, knowing better than to try to restrain a hysterical angel long enough to get a needle into him.

* * *

Shinji couldn't bear to go home with Misato and he didn't have anywhere else to go. Maybe that was why Ritsuko took pity on him and let him take another bed in the room where Asuka slept, now joined with Kaworu.

She was probably thinking that Shinji would go insane and join them before too much longer, so it was more efficient to have him here anyway.

He hadn't been able to save anyone. He'd felt his own hands kill Touji, another angel had possessed Rei's Eva and Rei'd had to kill herself. Asuka and now even Kaworu were reduced to this… Why was he alive? Why was he fine when Rei, Touji…

A soft groan snapped him out of those thoughts, made him look at Asuka hopefully, but it was Kaworu who was shifting in the hospital bed, kicking sheets off legs almost as pale as the white linen.

Shinji knew he had to be almost as much of a bastard as his father to be annoyed that Kaworu was coming to, but the last time he had the crying made it impossible for Shinji to sleep or focus on Asuka, so he got up and headed to the button he was supposed to press to summon an orderly. Kaworu couldn't be just having a nightmare: one of the nurses had explained the brain wave monitors to him, trying to give him some encouragement that Asuka was still in there, and she might be okay. People were supposed to work things out in dreams, right? She, she might get better. She had to.

Kaworu hadn't had any dreams, though. Not that Shinji had been paying a lot of attention to him, but it was so quiet here and there wasn't anything to do but pay attention to the two of them and think.

Yeah, here came the crying again, and Kaworu was clearly trying to curl up in a ball. Ritsuko had put his arms and legs in restraints, though, which was a little weird when it was Asuka that woke up that time and attacked Shinji. Kaworu'd just lain there and sobbed so far.

Looking abandoned, thin and helpless like that kitten, and Shinji knew that _he'd _wanted to strangle him before the nurse sedated him again and made the crying stop.

"You're here for her, aren't you?" Kaworu's words were a little slurred, probably because of the sedatives. "Not me… No, why would you be here for me, that has to be _her _feeling… I'm not even myself anymore, I can't tell what's me or her or Armisael… I wanted to live before, but now I don't know _why_." Blank red eyes stared up at the tiled ceiling. "I wanted to be myself, but now I think… I never cried before, but now I want the tears to _stop_. It always hurt, all three of us were always alone, but it will never change, will it? I should hurry up and die." He sighed, eyes closing again, as Shinji grabbed the front of that hospital gown.

"Shut up! How can you say that, when Rei…" and Touji, people who wanted to live and couldn't? "Rei, you survived because Rei killed herself!" He wasn't allowed to throw away that sacrifice!

"_Bitch_," was Kaworu's hateful reply, lips twisting into a snarl.

"What?!" Shinji slammed him down against the bed, feeling the cuffs wrench at Kaworu's arms. "Say that again!" If he said that again, Shinji would kill him!

"I didn't ask her to: she's just like all of you! You Lilim, that's where you get it from! Selfish bastards, only caring about yourselves: I bet she just wanted, wanted you to remember her." Kaworu's voice broke, letting out another sob. "She didn't care about my feelings, she just _made _me… I hate this, I hate all of you, I can't stand the thought of being one with you! I'd, I'd always rather have died, but now…" Kaworu threw his head back and keened.

The tiles on the ceiling shattered, ceramic shards raining down on Shinji's head as he tried to cover it with his hands. Earthquake, he wondered, becoming sure of it when the ground under his feet began to shake.

When that shaking resolved itself into a steady hum, though?

When Kaworu began to rise into the air, the chains at his wrists and ankles (one of the nurses had said that wasn't a very professional way to restrain someone, which made another one roll her eyes and say 'Dr. Akagi' as though that explained it all) dragging the bed with him?

Someone, Shinji wasn't sure who, was brave enough to pull the pilot away, Shinji's hands gripping the paper hospital gown hard enough to tear most of it off as he was hustled out of the room, thrown into his Eva without even changing.

"The geofront… The entire structure is responding."

Ritsuko thought a much better word was, "Resonating." A spacecraft meant to transport angels: it hadn't helped any of the others break in, so why was it responding to this one's distress?

"Shinji, we're trying to calculate a route to get the Eva there without destroying too much of the structure," Misato told him. The way everything manmade around Kaworu was shaking itself to bits - the bed was already gone, leaving only chains that were useless for restraining an angel – would help Shinji get there, but it wouldn't help keep the rest of the NERV's headquarters from coming down around their heads.

Screaming like this, curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees: the angel masquerading as their new pilot seemed more like a baby throwing a tantrum than a dangerous enemy, but the power level their equipment was sensing?

"What happened?" Shinji asked. "Did the last angel survive inside Kaworu?" Had Rei died for nothing?

"Kaworu is the Twelfth Angel," Misato said shortly, not wanting Shinji to ask for an explanation because it was hard enough to keep _herself _from demanding one, not least of the reason why Gendo and Ritsuko were anything but surprised by this. "We need you to kill him, Shinji." At least, Misato told herself, this wouldn't be as bad as Touji. It wasn't like they'd had very long to get to know each other.

"Another set of bulkheads has shattered!" Maya reported. "At this rate, all the barriers between him and Terminal Dogma will…"

"I'll go," Shinji said, gripping the Eva's controls and not meeting their eyes.

While that was a relief to Misato, who had expected more opposition/complaining, but that left the main problem of _how _Shinji was going to kill him.

As Shinji made his way to the angel the ground shifted under their feet again, and the holographic display in front of the command center blinked out. "Get that back up!" Misato ordered.

"Already working on it." Ritsuko didn't look happy. "I don't know how long the Magi will last: if we didn't have multiple redundancy of every system they'd already be down a hundred times over."

"Damn," Misato cursed. They needed the Magi to have any chance of calculating a way past that AT field, unless the commander was going to pull another Lance out of his hat by revealing that oh, by the way, sending an Eva down there to get it wouldn't cause Third Impact.

"We're moving!" Maya reported. "The uplinks to the other Magi systems… our elevation's changing. The entire geofront is being pulled up out of the ground!"

"The S2 engine," Ritsuko realized. "So that's why… the angels were the power supply _and _the engine. No wonder we never found any conventional systems in here: of course they'd be suited to life support, and if they were piloting it would explain how two ended up on the same planet." One not recognizing another's claim. "But this… Does this angel really have power equivalent to Adam?"

Misato stared at her friend. "You mean this thing might not _need _to reach Adam to initiate Third Impact?"

"Misato?" Shinji asked to get her attention, now that he was in range.

"Just attack!" Misato wished she had more of a plan than that, but at least a frontal assault would give her more information to work with.

Shinji charged in with the knife, but all it did was get stuck in the hexagon of light that appeared, Kaworu's AT field.

A shriek and it shattered. "Go away!" The boy who before had seem so aloof and unflappable now snarled, red eyes glowing. "Go _away!" _

"This pattern: he's generating a-"

Maya's warning came too late: Shinji's Eva had already vanished into the growing Sea of Dirac.

"All of you, just leave me alone!"

* * *

The tape showed a glowing figure appearing in lunar orbit, seizing the lance used to kill the Tenth Angel and disappearing with it.

From the perspective of most of the world, this was absolutely fantastic. The Black Egg was past the orbit of Mars and accelerating: since the thing the angels were after was gone, the attacks should stop, right?

In fact, public opinion had turned massively against NERV and SEELE. All that money, sending children to fight, die and get mind-raped, developing ungodly war machines and for what? An angel won and instead of causing Third Impact, it just took what was obviously an alien spacecraft, recovering what was their property to begin with and left peacefully? All that fear and hysteria for nothing? Just a waste of everyone's time and the UN Budget? The Committee for Human Instrumentality was already being audited.

They still had the MP Evas, but instead of dying the Twelfth Angel had survived and taken Adam's soul with him. Not to mention Lilith's soul, both halves of Lilith's body… They still had Adam's flesh, or at least flesh cloned from Adam and used to make the MP Evas, but Instrumentality required the flesh and soul of a seed to merge with an angel. Humanity itself was the Thirteenth Angel, but they were missing both of the keys, the one Gendo Ikari kept to himself and the one incarnated in the angel they'd _thought _was under their control.

It was the white seed, the Seed of Life that possessed the spiritual 'DNA' coding necessary for true immortality. There was all the data they'd gathered on Tabris, but with no remaining angels born of the white seed, where were they going to get a soul? True, they could keep the dummy plug clones around, but what were the odds a Seed in a Black Egg would die anytime soon, say before Earth became a burnt cinder? Much less before they died of old age or the truth of their project leaked! It wasn't like a White Seed needed to worry about falling down some stairs or an infected papercut! Especially if he was putting himself into suspended animation with that Lance, time would have no power to touch him.

Unlike them, poor damned spawn of the black seed. All Keel could do was clench old fists powerlessly, feeling how almost all of their strength had gone. How could the angel who was supposed to die rather than destroy humanity decide to just abandon them like this?! Abandon them to age and death! Remove all hope that humanity could ever evolve, either becoming gods on Earth or taking to the stars themselves as that heretic Yui Ikari had wished?

Or had Keel misread the prophecies? What if Tabris was destined to choose death not out of compassion but out of hatred? Instead of choosing not to take the risk of annihilating the Lilim present even if he merged with Lilith, would he have died just to spite them, just to deny them true instrumentality, with the power of the White Seed? He wouldn't have known that they had the clone bodies ready to catch Adam's precious soul either way.

Now, though, it was all so far outside their grasp.

Two members of the committee had already stopped responding, and Keel had no doubt more would follow. They had failed. Second Impact, all their efforts to save the human race had been for nothing. Failure like this… there was only one way to atone for it.

* * *

"Well, at least we have air?" Maya said with determined cheer as she pushed ahead.

Aoba just looked at her, pushing another branch covered with silver leaves out of his way as he climbed towards one of the several places where the food stockpiles (NERV HQ had been prepared for a siege) might have ended up.

Artificial gravity was now pushing them against the outside of the sphere, but first everything got pretty shaken up and then they'd been in zero-g for awhile, even as the branches grew to replace the walkways.

"I'm just amazed we're alive," was what Hyuga said, adjusting his glasses again.

The obvious response was 'for how long?' Aoba looked at the branches, not trusting any of them one bit. Ritsuko had theorized aloud that they were made of particle wave matter, that this 'Tree of Life' was the true form of the Twelfth Angel. It might be ignoring them for now, but since obviously the surviving NERV staff would have to destroy it to try to find some way to get back home? Or maybe it wasn't ignoring them. Maybe their efforts to survive were entertaining. Like that reality show.

It really boggled the mind that as far as they could tell, _none _of the people who were in NERV had died while all of that shaking was going on. Why would an angel save them unless it was saving them for later? Especially when the remaining Evas had been smashed in their cages, and Evas were a lot more durable than people.

That was when Maya screamed.

"What… The…" The clearing made by the impact of a huge tank or something was strewn with dead bodies. Dead blue-haired bodies.

Hyuga was already using his radio to contact Misato. "Are any of them still alive?" Commander Ikari demanded, interrupting his report and ignoring the implicit request for an explanation.

"I don't think so," Hyuga said, which was an understatement. "All of them are… decaying." It wasn't rotting, not when they didn't stink. Not when it looked more like the dismembered pieces were _melting_.

Just… What the hell had gone on here? Why didn't the Commander sound surprised?

"Looking for this, Ikari?"

Hyuga and Aoba both raised their guns, Maya shrinking back as the angel appeared hovering over the middle of the clearing, another girl that looked like Rei in his arms.

"The girl you called Rei: you knew she was an angel all along. She's like me and she owes me, for what she tried to do to my mind after the other angel broke into it for her. So I'm keeping her." The thing that looked like a teenage boy smirked, rubbing his cheek against blue hair as the girl looked at them with what barely qualified as mild curiosity. "This is my world now, and I'm in control here, not you Lilim. I was going to cast you all down to your world and let you die on the vine with it, now that there are no longer any sources of new souls there, but this way you can have a taste of your own medicine."

"They're not in tubes," the girl (angel?) that looked like Rei pointed out in a voice that was almost neutral but not quite: she seemed a little disappointed. "Or tanks. You're letting them walk around freely."

Kaworu made a disgusted face, looking like he was definitely a teenager for a moment. "You're right, that would be fair, but I'm not going to be as cruel as they were. Not _quite_. You can put them in tubes if you want, though," he offered, acting as though it was generous of him.

"I will consider it."

"Rei," Gendo Ikari said, voice stern, as though ordering her to snap out of it, certain she would obey him.

For a moment the other angel might have looked a little worried that she would obey the Commander and side with the humans against him, but instead Rei began to glow. "I remember seeing you smiling just for me as I died. Then I awoke in the tank and knew it must have been a hallucination, because you would never smile for me: the only one you care about is _her_. This body remembers many hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation. Being locked in the dark in the tank full of LCL. Kaworu is like me. The Lilim that kept him also only cared about him for what he could do for them and because he was a symbol. You also intended me to die in order to accomplish your goals. From now on, I will follow Kaworu, not you."

"Hear that, old man? Putting Rei in a copy of your wife's body, giving half of Rei's original body to your wife so that she could steal her power: you Lilim aren't getting away with it anymore. You're not using us for your damn scenarios! _Maybe _we'll put the rest of you back, for good behavior, but you can die here cursing your powerlessness." Kaworu laughed. "I don't need to bring my old men here to know that's what's happening to them right now. Or perhaps the other Lilim will take revenge for me. Revenge for my birth." That thought seemed to kill his good mood.

Rei touched his shoulder when he closed his eyes. "Go back?"

He shook his head. "I wish I'd remembered to bring that piano." He was the only one who knew he was talking about the abandoned piano he'd been playing when Shinji found him. "It was probably smashed. Oh well. I want to sing. There's all kinds of music in the transmissions that the old men never let me listen to." Along with TV programs and movies.

Part of him thought that he probably would relent and put them back after giving them just a taste of their own medicine, so until then he wasn't going to go FTL. That would make it harder to get them back to Earth without too much time passing while they were gone. Being around the old men made him aware how short the lives of Lilim were.

And they'd still tried to make his so very short… Selfish bastards.

So it was alright for him to be selfish for a bit. It was still something of a comfort that he was usually the one restraining Rei, that she was more selfish than he was. She was the one who had Shinji tied up when he demanded to see Asuka and Misato. Kaworu had just pitched Eva 01 out an airlock. If that woman wanted to float around in space all alone in a stolen body, then she could _be _all alone instead of reminding the angel whose body she'd stolen of how Gendo had never loved her. At least meeting Yui had made sure that Rei would stay on his side instead of deciding to go back to earth and give the Lilim instrumentality or anything like that.

They would play with the Lilim for now, and sing, fly around, watch trashy TV: all the things they weren't allowed to do before. If freedom ever started to grow boring, they could put themselves to sleep with the lance until they arrived at their very own world. Well, Kaworu's very own world, but the loneliness was his feeling, not just Rei's. A feeling they shared instead of one that was forced on him. So she could stay.

* * *

"So it's supposed to be this hot… but how do I tell how hot I'm making it by their measurements?" It was the smell instead of the muttering that woke up Shinji.

Kaworu was hovering over a flat piece of metal that looked like he'd pressed a bit of wreckage into service as a cookie sheet. Literally hovering, although there wasn't any particular reason to hover. He just liked flying and liked being able to use his powers without worrying about Lilim detection equipment. Various bags and tins that hadn't been there when Shinji fell asleep were scattered around the room, with several of those silvery branches serving as shelves.

"Oh, you're awake. According to Rei, you can cook. I'm listening to programs, but there are a lot of things I don't know and we've only got preserved food." Kaworu had re-frozen the frozen stuff, and he could make more of what he'd scanned in theory, but he didn't want to mess with that when he was still figuring out how to tell the difference between flower, flour and baking soda. "I'll untie you if you help me with this."

"You aren't going to do anything weird, are you? And I want clothes!" Shinji blushed. He thought he had a chance of getting some this time, because at least Kaworu had wrapped himself in a sheet or something, probably because he'd encountered the reason normal people wore aprons.

"…Rei asked me not to give you clothing, but if you give it back to me when she comes back, you can have half my sheet," Kaworu offered, shaking his head and clearly thinking that Lilim were weird about clothing and contact. Possibly they got it from Lilith, since she seemed to have a strong opinion regarding Shinji's degree of coverage, not just clothing but how he'd been tied down. "And I don't know what you think is weird." It wasn't like there was any internal sense or rules to it.

"Don't kiss me or, or anything else!"

"Anything?" Kaworu tilted his white head, and Shinji saw that yes, he'd gotten flour or something else powdery on him already. "I only kissed you because Rei asked me to, although… Since she forced her feelings on me, I do wonder what it would be like to be loved by something like you, but Rei will touch and kiss me, and she doesn't want me to die, so I'm already loved." He smiled with his eyes closed for a moment, radiating happiness. "I don't care if she loves you more or not as long as I'm loved, but it matters to Rei. If you keep acting like seeing Asuka and Misato is more important to you than spending time with her, then she'll never let you see them. It's irrational, but even _I _can figure it out, so you don't have any excuse." When Shinji was used to irrational things.

Shinji just stared at him like he was the idiot here, but Kaworu was in a good enough mood to ignore the Lilim's impertinence instead of showing Shinji exactly who was the god here. "Well, are you going to help? Do you want half my sheet or not?"

Since Shinji wanted food, there wasn't really much of a choice.

* * *

_Armisael has a little speech about how Rei's heart is evil and full of jealousy and such over Shinji. I think in this scenario, Shinji would end up seeing Kaworu as the one he can count on to be saner/not molest him… Or mostly not, unless there's some reason to do so. _

_If it seems as though Kaworu recovered a little too easily from Armisael's mental assault, not really. It's part of why he went from 'all go away' to wanting people near him, even Rei. Wanting those people to acknowledge his existence. Also, the thing is that he was _already _suicidal: both anime and manga versions accepted death (despite the anime version understanding the value of life, see Ode to Joy's lyrics and some of what he says) which isn't exactly a sign of a healthy ego. Still, at least his will to live was strong enough that instead of using the lance to put himself into nearly-eternal dreamless sleep, death without the actually dying part and hence even more tempting (the psychological mechanics of teenage suicide attempts, especially why they pick methods that don't work, are interesting), he went looking for reasons to live. Including giving the Lilim tastes of their own medicine, although he's nice enough that he probably will keep Rei from putting them in tubes of LCL. Most of them. Since Gendo and Ritsuko are her old men-equivalents..._

_A consequence of forcing powerlessness on people is that they never learn how to deal with power morally. When Rei was used as a tool and Kaworu was confined, either of them deciding to break those mental chains and going, 'Screw this, why am I putting up with the Lilim treating me like this when I am a god in their religion?' is that their role models for having power are Gendo Ikari and SEELE. So they'd have the concept that to have power means to be evil, too. Also, well, teenagers. _

_Kaworu and Rei aren't fundamentally bad people, nor are they really antisocial/misanthropic people (which is why Shinji got fished out of the Sea of Dirac and Kaworu protected the people in the Geofront even when he wanted them to go away/just die), but there's a reason that in most of these oneshots, when manga!Kaworu makes the decision to make use of his power, it's often for something morally questionable at best, and often something that infringes on the will of others - that's the application of power he thinks of because that's what he's seen it used for. SEELE are not especially nice. It's also inspired by the tendency manga, anime and Rebuild/pachinko versions of Kaworu have to manipulate Evas into fighting for them, although in manga!Kaworu's case, I theorize that part of that is the subconscious desire for someone to want to protect him._


	10. The Twelfth Angel, Lilim

_More warning for suicide and disturbing sexual stuff. Although a lot of what the anime implies is as bad or worse, I have been reminded that some people saw the anime while they were young enough a lot of that went right over their heads (lucky...). I did not rate this M for sappy fluffy yaoi lemons, kay?_

* * *

The new pilot was saying something, and Shinji thought that it was about Rei, something about how she'd died, which meant that Shinji really should care. He'd liked Rei, or he'd thought he did, but for some reason it was almost impossible to focus on anything other than the fact that Kaworu was buckling his belt, which meant he was done putting on his clothes.

Shinji hadn't even started changing, because when he got to the locker room after escaping from Misato's attempt to offer condolences and sympathy Kaworu was in there with his plug suit already off, and was it because Rei just died? Shinji had noticed that deadly danger made him react afterwards, but being turned on because Rei died was just horrible, made Shinji ashamed enough already that the fact he was staring at a _guy _barely mattered by comparison.

Especially not when Kaworu's skin was so smooth, without a single scar, as milky-pale as Rei's.

Maybe that was it? The part of Shinji that registered what was normal and what other people thought flailed desperately. Kaworu had reminded him of Rei as soon as they met. So maybe it did have something to do with losing Rei, but not just in such an incredibly eww way as wanting to have sex because she was dead? Kaworu was enough like Rei that maybe seeing him felt like Rei was still here, sort of, not dead along with the angel?

While Shinji's superego worked on that flimsy justification, Shinji's id, quite firmly in control, was more worried about the fact that Kaworu had finished putting his clothes on. Forget concerns about other people or what society would think. Even though Shinji was aware that something was deeply wrong, this part of him wasn't confused by this at all. Clearly there was something wrong with the universe, and it was that _there was no more naked_.

Shinji's conscious mind was as startled as Kaworu to find that he'd grabbed Kaworu's shirt and jammed him roughly up against the lockers. Breathing hard, Shinji couldn't meet Kaworu's eyes, not because he was embarrassed but because he couldn't look away from Kaworu's chest, where a thin white shirt and a few buttons were all that separated him from that skin. All he had to do was tear it away (provided he was strong enough, Shinji's self-doubt chimed in), and then the belt, that red belt had to go, and then…

And then all that oxygen rushing to his head while his blood went somewhere else knocked Shinji out. Kaworu caught him, wondering what the hell. Being raised by the old men had taught him that Lilim were completely insane, and Shinji's random freaking out about different things like Kaworu running out of soap or saving that poor cat from starving to death was just more evidence that he was trapped on the planet of the crazy people.

Dammit, he thought, he'd have to take Shinji to the infirmary.

Carrying Shinji, Kaworu didn't meet anyone else as he traveled through NERV's echoing corridors and caverns, not until he reached the location marked on SEELE's map of NERV as the main medical area, as distinct from Ritsuko's labs. He had to knock by kicking the bottom of the door with his foot, since his arms were full of unconscious Lilim.

A nurse opened the door. Since Kaworu immediately jammed Shinji in her direction, so that the other Lilim would do something with this, he was the first thing she saw. Her eyes widened with worry: they'd just lost one pilot to an angel that infected the evas and pilots, and now another pilot the angel tried to infect was unconscious? Since the angel managed to take down the Fifth Child's Eva, Nagisa should have gotten more exposure to whatever this was than Ikari. If something had happened to Shinji, then unless Dr. Akagi managed to come up with something, their last pilot was sure to follo-

It was when her concerned eyes started to examine Kaworu, absently calling for an orderly to take the Third Child, that all those thoughts went away.

Ikari? Oh, right, that was the thing in between her and that delicious young man… the young man who was _fifteen_ and probably not legal, even if this was Japan, and…

He might be in danger! He needed a physical exam!

_Score! _

* * *

Shinji groaned as he came to, wondering where he was. He'd been shoved into the corner of some hard tiled room: from the smell and the way opening his eyes a fraction revealed it was brightly, glaringly lit, probably NERV's infirmary. Had he fallen asleep while visiting Asuka, hiding in a corner so they didn't make him leave?

Blearily he stared at the center of the room, where a large mass of white revealed itself to be a cluster of doctors and nurses.

When he stood up and said, "Excuse me?" because he still couldn't remember what he was doing here and now he had a headache,

The doctors ignored him, but hands appeared, prying two of them apart so Kaworu could see Shinji. "Oh, he did wake up on his own."

One of the doctors coughed. "Yes, well, examining you is more important since you had more exposure."

Exposure? Shinji thought, outraged. Kaworu was naked!

And Shinji couldn't see anything but Kaworu's chest because there were more nurses in the way!

…why did he feel gypped?

"He probably just hyperventilated and fainted, like those two," another of the nurses said, running a hand up Kaworu's chest. Shinji followed the nod of her head to see two more passed-out people, another nurse and one of the male orderlies that had restrained Asuka.

Wait, the male orderly had blood all over his face and chest, and they were just ignoring him? Like they'd ignored Shinji?

Wait, was that a nosebleed? That actually happened?

"Shinji's recovered, so I'm leaving," Kaworu said.

"But we still haven't…" someone said, amidst the chorus of disappointed sounds as Kaworu waded out of the mass towards…

Kaworu frowned. "Where is my clothing?"

Silence.

Kaworu turned, Shinji losing the battle to remove his eyes from Kaworu's ass. "I want my belt. I liked my belt." It was red leather, a deep, rich color. And also shiny.

His _belt_, Shinji wondered. Shouldn't Kaworu be more concerned about making them return his _pants_?

"I'm not leaving without my belt," Kaworu said, and Shinji didn't need to look at the others to know saying that was a mistake: now Kaworu was never getting that belt back.

At least, that was what Shinji thought until he sensed the aura of menace in the air.

* * *

One minute later, Kaworu walked out of the infirmary happily wearing the orange undershirt he'd worn under the school uniform's generic white dress shirt, with the belt draped over his shoulder.

Shinji couldn't help noticing that the shirt brought out the orange undertone in his eyes, making them look a little more like Rei's, while the color of the belt was almost a match for them, but what really concerned him was that, "_I really should tell him to put on some pants_." The trouble was that every time Shinji opened his mouth to say it, he ended up with it just hanging open so he looked like a goldfish.

Like now, which was probably why Kaworu had turned around to look at him curiously.

"_I really need to tell him to put on some pants_," Shinji thought again, desperately, but even though he knew he _should_, some part of him thought that was just such a damn stupid thing to say that it was refusing to let those words come out of his mouth. Where was this part of him when he said stupid things to Asuka, Rei, Misato…

He must look like such an idiot to Kaworu, but then, didn't he look like an idiot to everyone?

What Kaworu was thinking was that Lilim were so strange. He wasn't sure why the Third Child was following him, but the Third Child was a different brand of strange from the old men, so at least it should be entertaining. Well, at least if he started to breathe fast and pass out again, according to the doctors mouth-to-mouth contact would fix it, along with most other things. Kaworu had let one of them insist on demonstrating proper technique, just in case it ever came in useful.

The Lilim even followed him into his assigned room, and sat down on the bed next to Kaworu.

Oh, damn, the Lilim was trembling. Kaworu sighed, pushing untamed white hair back from his eyes. He didn't want to drag Shinji to the infirmary again, that had been a huge waste of time. Getting examined by Lilim that just wanted to gawk at or be in the exalted presence of the angel was so distasteful. So much for going there on behalf of the Third Child: the Lilim had ignored the other of their own kind in favor of Kaworu. Although that was to be expected, they could at least have done their duty to a pilot… He shook his head, frowning. There he went again, expecting even halfway-decent behavior of Lilim. Right after Keel had referred to compassion and getting upset on behalf of others, the way Shinji had on behalf of that cat, as a bad thing, something they would be cured of by merging with him.

If anything, Kaworu would have liked to think that the Lilim would have ended up a little more like him, but one Kaworu versus billions of Lilim? There wouldn't be anything of him left in the personality developed by the mass. He'd just be a drowned out, ignored part of something dominated by Lilim like the old men, and that thought made him clench his fists, ruined the good mood he'd been put in by managing to recover his belt from the clutches of the Lilim.

And also getting to make use of some of the combat techniques he'd been drilled on since he was small. He'd only been able to avoid Armisael for so long before his Eva was encroached on: what a waste. Although getting to force annoying Lilim to stop interfering with him was much better than fighting someone who had never done anything to him. Even if she had made him cry, that was really Rei's fault: those were her feelings in the connection between the three of them.

So _stupid_.

He didn't think he'd get in trouble for this. If SEELE demanded to know why he had knocked out NERV's medical staff, he could just say that he'd done it to avoid examinations that might have revealed he was an angel. No problem there.

Kaworu smiled, and that was when the Third Child grabbed him, pushed him down on the bed, and started kissing him.

Ah, Shinji was breathing hard, the way he had been before he passed out the last time! He must be trying to fix this condition before falling unconscious (which made so much sense Kaworu should have realized right away that couldn't be the real reason Shinji was kissing him). He opened his mouth, since being slobbered on for a few seconds was better than having to drag the Third Child to the infirmary again.

When Shinji's hands left his head, Kaworu's eyes widened. This felt… different. It wasn't just that it was calling up the First Child's memories and desire to have physical contact with the Third Child, but this kiss felt genuinely good in and of itself.

Huh.

Kaworu was looking for ways to spend the time he had before the end, and since leaked memories and both sets of instincts wanted more physical contact with this particular Lilim, this seemed as good a way as any.

* * *

"Misato?"

The officer sighed, leaning over her desk at home. "…Why do I have the feeling you're not calling me to say hi, Ritsuko?"

"Because you're not as dumb as you look," Ritsuko said, smiling wryly as she shrugged on her lab coat. "You've got a discipline problem."

"Asuka's woken up?"

"No, I mean the new one." The one that was certainly an angel, which was why Ritsuko was passing the buck to Misato. "He took out every single one of my on-duty medical staff, including the orderlies."

"What?" She'd known he was dangerous, but this? "Why?"

"I don't know, not a single one of them is giving me a straight answer. From the way they're not answering me, though?" Ritsuko smiled, light glinting off her lipstick. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed how pretty the boy is." Not when Shinji was clearly turning Misato into a cougar.

"You mean one of them might have done something inappropriate?" Misato could picture it. Someone groped him, the combat-trained teenager reacted (Asuka would have done the same), someone called for help… And afterwards, when they figured out what was going on, they were all too embarrassed to admit they'd been tricked into jumping an underage boy for defending his virtue to confess, or they wanted to protect the person who did it.

And while a girl could scream to high heaven if someone touched her inappropriately, Misato'd been in the military. Especially if it was a woman, most people assumed there was something wrong with a man who didn't want sex, even if it was illegal. Misato's guess was that the boy was bi, too, and that just increased the odds of someone blaming the victim.

If that really was the case, then Misato could respect someone who settled things with their own fists instead of calling for help and just ending up more shamed, but she needed to go find Kaworu and get him to tell her about it, at least. She needed to establish that she was a trustworthy commanding officer.

Even if she didn't trust Kaworu and his too-perfect timing, his too-perfect skill with an Eva it should have been impossible for him to pilot. Especially because she didn't trust him.

At least she'd already gone over a speech like this in her head, although she was expecting to give it to Shinji. She shouldn't have needed Kaji's notes to point out to her that Shinji looked like a girl.

And not just any girl. Maybe it was Rei's unnatural skin, hair and eye color that had kept Misato from noticing the resemblance, but comparing black and white photos of the two? They could be twins.

Could have been twins.

"_Rei… what were you_?" Misato hated that she was thinking this now. Rei had just died to protect Shinji, to defeat an angel and save the world, and here Misato was starting to wonder if they were all much safer with her dead. "_And what is he, when he's so much like you?" _

Before confronting Kaworu, Misato took a detour into the tunnels of the Magi to get a look at the security cameras and find out exactly what happened in the infirmary.

Why had no one told her that Shinji fell unconscious? Why wasn't he being examined? Why was everyone crowding around Kaworu like he was the last beer on a midsummer day? What she saw filled Misato's mind with more and more questions, but at least she knew a few definite facts:

For all his slouching and unconcern while Asuka was getting her mind torn apart out there, Kaworu was _good_. And not just 'showy backflips off angels while piloting an Eva that didn't belong to him, what the hell' good.

"You use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people than if you only have to beware one," Misato misquoted. This wasn't the product of training to face angels, not when they came one at a time and NERV was so completely unprepared for one that split into two.

He'd taken down all of them, including orderlies with knockout syringes, with only a mildly bored and annoyed look on his face. So blasé about fighting human beings, and not in the ring but for real? He hadn't broken out any lethal moves, but she could tell that was only because he hadn't considered it worth the bother, forget being pressed hard enough. It was harder to take down someone without killing them than to kill them, but Kaworu had seen this as… what? Not a game, games were fun.

Normal people were instinctively reluctant to harm other people. A hell of a lot of basic was about getting people past that, trying to enable them to actually pull that trigger, and trying to keep them from going insane afterwards when their mind processed what they'd just done. Normal people had to be hopped up on adrenaline to fight, like Asuka's focused wrath.

What kind of person could calmly take down an entire room and regard it as nothing but a pain in the ass?

And then taking the belt, and the shirt, and not bothering to interrogate others to force them to surrender the location of his pants, underwear, shoes and socks? Just… walking off barefoot like that, simply happy he'd gotten his favorite belt back, with Shinji following him looking like he was too shocked to look away from the train wreck?

People, people just didn't act like that.

People. Humans.

Misato went in there with her gun drawn intending to rescue Shinji from the angel's vile clutches, but when she saw them…

It was definitely the angel. Had to be the angel doing something to her. It wasn't that Shinji was turning her into a perverted old woman and oh god, he was _fourteen_.

She shouldn't be doing this, Misato's conscience thought. Really, _really _shouldn't be doing this. Leaning over them and licking her lips as she slowly undid her top with one hand: could she _be _any creepier?

The rest of her was thinking that she was going to show them how this was done, since they clearly had a lot to learn.

"_I should at least… restrain the angel…_" And oh hey, there was a leather belt right by the side of the bed.

* * *

"_Well, he can't be normal_," Hyuga thought, peering through the binoculars. He was keeping an eye on the Fifth Child because Misato asked him to help her find out the nak-the truth. That was it, he was just spying on the Fifth Child for Misato's sake. Because he was attracted to-admired Misato. And for the sake of humanity's survival. Really.

"_Normal people don't get up at this hour to stand on decapitated angel statues in lakes of LCL muttering to themselves." _Also, normal people wore pants. And no part of Hyuga was now thinking that really, pants and zippers and everything really just got in the way-ahem, were they really necessary in hot summer weather like that following Second Impact?

And even if he had been thinking that a pants-optional dress code would have some good points, he was definitely only thinking of Misa-he was definitely not thinking of Misato, because she was his commanding officer. And that was wrong, if not _as _wrong as oogling underage boys. Even though Japan's national absolute minimum age of consent was 13, local laws could push it as high as 18 and there was such a thing as good taste. Tokyo-3 was a special administrative zone, due to the presence of NERV. NERV was the executive branch of the Committee for Human Instrumentality. According to Kaji's information, the Committee was made up of old European members of some semi-Christian cult, which explained why the age of consent for heterosexual sex was eighteen and the age of consent for homosexual sex was 'don't let us catch you or you're out on your ass,' same as the Japanese military and very unlike the rest of the normally more liberal UN military.

Asuka had known what the rules were and how much trouble she could get Kaji in, she just hadn't thought the rules applied to her, according to Misato.

Now Asuka was… and Hyuga had no illusions. He was just as disposable, especially now that he was doing what got Kaji killed. Spying on SEELE's pilot like this: he didn't want to get hauled in as a pedophile. If only he could stop thinking these things!

It didn't help when Kaworu turned in his direction. Hyuga wasn't looking at Kaworu's face, so he didn't register that the angel saw him despite all the distance in between the two of them.

* * *

"You're late."

"Forgive me, I couldn't get away until now." Not without either using his abilities and showing up on NERV's detectors or breaking his favorite belt. He'd had to wait until Shinji was awake and Misato wasn't to convince him to undo the belt. Then all he had to do was wait for Shinji to tire himself out again, which was anything but a hardship.

"…Tabris, I thought you were told to wear either the school uniform or plugsuit while in Tokyo-3."

"Members of Dr. Akagi's team removed my pants and other articles of clothing. I was only able to reacquire these."

His belt and that dreadful orange shirt. The color created the illusion that his skin had something of a peach tone to it, made him look more like a mere mortal instead of a True Successor, a child of the White Seed, a pure being that they would use to obtain that purity and immortality.

Keel knew that he really should tell him to put on more clothing. True, Adam and Eve had been naked in their purity, so to put clothing on the angel was unnecessary and they had always kept him in his proper state of grace in their facilities, but the Lilim did not possess that purity. Had he walked to his present location from NERV? Allowing unworthy spawn of the Black Seed to behold his splendor? Especially now that the outskirts of Tokyo-3 were deserted, evacuated and abandoned to any looter brave enough to dare the risk of running into angels or roaming patrols, it was a miracle no one had lain a profane hand on him. The thought of some lustful sinner desecrating the pure child of Adam…

Should not have seemed…

Oh, _damnation._ That was the one good thing about being this old: he was mostly freed from the tyranny of the flesh, enough that he could recognize this impulse for what it was. "It appears that I misread the prophecies," Keel forced himself to confess. "I assumed that Tabris would be the next to be called to join with Lilith, but Tabris possesses the soul of Adam. Even though his flesh is partially that of the Lilim, his soul is that of the White Seed. Instrumentality is attained when an angel becomes one with a seed of either the White Tree or the Black."

"You mean that instead of Tabris being called to merge with Lilith, we Lilim are now… the ones being called?"

"To merge with the soul and flesh of a seed, but Tabris' flesh is not Adam's." Although it was born from Adam. So this was why the prophecies said that Tabris would be key to instrumentality, yet also contained instructions for a ritual so very different from the angel simply descending to purify the flesh of Lilith and the depravity of the Lilim with that radiant soul. "Prepare to return to Germany: I will have a jet scrambled to retrieve you." Before Gendo Ikari could make any moves. The man possessed the soul and flesh of Lilith: had he and that traitor Yui realized this all along? That humanity was the angel that would be called to act?

A simple adjustment to his dosage would destroy Tabris' current body, placing that soul in one of the forms that had kept away from the world of the Lilim and any possible impurity. If anything, the call to join with the seeds would be helpful, allowing them to be certain that soul was present within the dummy plug of one of the MP Evas. This was a deviation from the scenario, but no deviation at all from the prophecies… Provided Gendo Ikari was not able to acquire Tabris and keep him from them. He might be a fool and a traitor, but he knew his lore. He would not fail to realize what it meant, that those who beheld the angel were called to that radiant being, to worship and become one with it.

After Tabris nodded obediently, Keel cut the connection as soon as possible so that he could do what he could to ensure the angel's safety.

* * *

Kaworu walked along the shore, picking his way carefully across the rubble. It was too fresh, too raw, for the edges to be worn smooth: if he stepped on an edge it would be easy for the concrete to slice his foot.

Hmm, but no. Something that could seem accidental, undignified: no, he didn't want that. He wanted a death that was obviously his own choice, by his own will if not his own hand.

"_Shit,"_ he said, exactly because of how the old men would have reacted to hear such a disgusting word from his mouth. "A matter of hours…" He thought he'd had more time! He hadn't even started trying to think of something! He would buy more time by going into NERV, making it difficult for them to retrieve him, but then he'd be under NERV's observation, and they might interfere in his chosen death. Depending on what it was?

"How many methods of killing did they make me learn? There has to be _something _that's appropriate," he told himself. "I know some of the Lilim killed themselves when they found what they were really working on. 'Eating a gun' isn't dramatic enough." This was his _death_, he was talking about, the one thing he truly had a choice in, his path to freedom. He refused to let it be something pathetic or unmemorable. "It's what they do instead of getting captured or gunned down, yes, but only after they realize that they've failed, that there's nothing they can do to stop the old men." By, for example, killing their tame angel. Seeing a Lilim take that way out, fleeing to the sweet embrace of death rather than be captured, interrogated and finally executed? Kaworu had admired him. At least he'd tried, even if they should have known trying to shoot _him _wouldn't work.

But, the next day, it was as though nothing ever happened. The blood cleaned away, the man's name taboo. Powerless and forgotten. No, he would not die that way. "There's stabbing myself in the gut, seppuku, but _I _haven't dishonored myself or done anything wrong. Hmm, I could set myself on fire, but isn't that also for purification?"

Before, Kaworu was staring out over the lake, and it was impossible for Hyuga to read his lips even though the binoculars Misato gave him had built-in software to assist. He was still in no condition to look at Kaworu's _face_, but the software's best guess was displayed in text on the screen.

"Hanging sounds boring, and isn't it a method of execution as well? Normally there's a 'hangman,' yes? This is _my _death, I won't let them think some unknown killed me. They'd have to find me only after I was safely dead, otherwise they might cut me down, and… No, that's just a pathetic way to die. Too much at the mercy of others. I might as well let them hunt me down for disobedience, if I'm going to die like a dog anyway." Kaworu's frown deepened, even though it still resembled an annoyed pout. "There's poison, of course, like that philosopher. Music playing as I die would be nice, but where am I going to get that many rose petals? I don't have any friends, either, to come be with me as I die, so that's out." When his death scene would be so pathetically lacking by comparison. "Well, I guess… Now that I think about it, having Shinji there… yes. And I definitely want music." He nodded, feeling a little better about it. "So, now I need to pick a suicide method and a song, or songs if it's something that takes awhile. That might be nice, especially if I'll have company, but it can't take too long or else I'll have to worry about NERV or SEELE capturing me while I'm weak and doing whatever they want to me."

Those words made Hyuga swallow, distantly noticing the dryness of his throat, as Kaworu bent down to pick up what might be a fragment of broken glass.

"Especially if it really is true that the Lilim can merge with me like that, they might be able to do it in even if I don't want it." Yes: from the light glinting off it, that was almost certainly glass. "Think you can use me and my body for your Third Impact the way you used my father for your Second, you damn old men?" Kaworu held it up to the light. "That Lilim's watching me on behalf of NERV, but they still control the eyes in the sky: outdoors, yes, so they can watch powerlessly as their hopes of godhood and oneness die with me." He nodded, lowering his arm again, and started to run nimbly across the wreckage towards headquarters.

It was when Hyuga couldn't see him anymore that he finally managed to fish his cell phone out of his pocket. NERV had internal repeaters for cell phone signals, otherwise the entire area inside the geofront would have absolutely no signal.

* * *

"You're saying Kaworu's… an angel? But what about Rei?" Shinji demanded, startled fully awake by Misato's words after being shaken out of the sleep of the exhausted and sated by her frantic hands.

"I don't know," she said, checking her gun. "I want you to say his name when he comes in the door." Misato leaned in a corner of the room, closing her eyes. If she didn't see him, she should be able to shoot him before the desire to tie him down and do things to-to _interrogate _him about SEELE and Gendo's plans overrode the knowledge that he was a damn angel and they all had to die. Because they were too dangerous to live. This wasn't just revenge. It didn't matter what Hyuga had read for her out of the partial transcript, and the angel could have been lying.

She wished she could believe that he was, that humanity hadn't done this to itself.

"Kaworu!" Shinji said when the other boy flung the door open, sounding like he was trying to warn him instead of helping her, but Misato knew who it was already. That scent, like the sky after it rained, like the wind coming off the sea, laden with salt. It should have made her sick to her stomach, should have reminded her of when her father set her adrift in that capsule, but even though the smell of the sea still called up those memories this scent, this feeling, also called up something else, something primal, that said _want_.

Like lust, but not just lust. Misato was well familiar with lust, and she certainly liked sex, but it wasn't something she'd walk through fire for. She wasn't going to throw her life away for some man: her revenge and her career (the path to her revenge), they were what was important.

She somehow managed to squeeze the trigger, regretting it in that instant, but she didn't need the lack of blood in the air to tell her that she'd missed. There was no way she could have brought herself to do even that if it would have hit him, every fiber in her body except whatever part of her was _her _not crying out in rejection of the idea of harming the precious thing but so firmly opposed the weight had dragged down her arms.

It was a miracle she hadn't shot herself in the foot. Especially since she was already taking a step forward.

Was this, was this what drove the other angels to try to penetrate NERV? Like salmon returning to spawn, the urge to breed and die driving them on, the way she could feel it pushing at her? Even though she didn't want to? Had _they _truly wanted to?

For the next generation, for the children, for humanity's survival, individuals were expendable. She was a military commander who had sent children out to fight and perhaps even die for the sake of the rest of the world. People died, everyone did. It was all meaningless if there was no one left to go on. She _hated _that knowledge, she hated the drive to protect his genes that might be the only reason, the only reason at all, her father had saved her instead of himself that day.

Even as she hated her own weakness, her situational awareness tracked Shinji leaving the bed to join Kaworu, called to his side but too innocent still to fight it even to the pathetic extent she was. He was still a teenager, didn't know that being connected to other people would _always _end in tears. Didn't know that things that felt so good could be nothing but suicide, that even Misato's precious beer would kill her someday, if it had the chance.

"Good, she already knows," Kaworu said. "And you do too? That makes things easier."

"Kaworu, what are you…?"

"Hold me," the angel said. "Catch me, like I caught you when you fell. I want you to hold me until it's over. It's my last request. Don't worry, it won't take long."

"Ka-!" Misato didn't need Shinji's bitten-off cry of shock and alarm to tell her that Hyuga's theory was correct.

Not when she could smell the blood in the air.

She opened her eyes to see that Kaworu had shut Shinji up by kissing him, even as the blood spilled down the front of his shirt, even as that piece of glass remained lodged in his throat, opening up the cut further with every breath he took. It was already deep: this was no bit of inexperienced teenage drama, this was someone who knew exactly what it took to kill a man. Or an angel.

Blood could be replaced, but when Shinji grabbed Kaworu's arm, trying to pull it and the shard away from that throat, he only grabbed one arm.

Blood could be replaced, and Shinji would have given as much as it took, after losing too many people, but Misato saw Kaworu's other hand lift up, the movement shaky and full of exaggerated care, proving how far gone he already was, to have lost that grace of his.

Saw it reach the back of his neck, saw the light and smelled burnt hair and flesh before Kaworu finally slumped forward again, letting Shinji do whatever he wanted. Now that he'd made certain there was absolutely no chance.

Misato knew he was dead when the attraction switched off as fast as if someone had pulled the plug. Whatever was behind it couldn't be physical or even pheromones: those would have lingered. Brainwaves, like the one the angel that got Asuka broadcasted? His AT field?

"Kaworu! Kaworu!" Shinji looked at her angrily: why wasn't she _doing _something? Kaworu wasn't their enemy, they couldn't just let him do this!

And the thing was that if Misato could have saved him, if she could have done something to stop this, she would have. Not to save a boy willing to die to save the world, but because a part of her was _furious _now, wanted to kill him again for trying to escape her. Hated him now not because he was one of the things that killed her father, but because he'd taken what she wanted away from her. She would have forced him to stay alive, forced him to let her have him, even if it ended the world and killed _everyone_. _Especially _if it killed _him_.

She fell back against the wall for support, wondering why they were still alive, why Third Impact hadn't happened last night, because she knew now that part of her had certainly been trying. That desire to crawl inside of him, to make him unable to think of anything but her and Shinji, to break him open and make him scream?

It made her want to throw up, and Shinji, Shinji was young enough to mistake what drew him towards Kaworu for love. Young enough to look with such devastated brown eyes at red ones that were still open, still smiling, and maybe Kaworu had mistaken this for love, too. Or maybe it was just a normal teenage crush, that infatuation in those eyes.

"He died for you," that was all she could say to Shinji. "It was either him or all of us. He could have fought to survive: he didn't."

Shinji glared at her, and she knew that the only reason he wasn't punching her right now was that he would have had to let go of Kaworu.

"We're not safe yet. There's still what's down in Terminal Dogma." How were they doing to protect it from _themselves_? How was she going to keep the _entire human race_ away from Adam when she already had to worry about SEELE's plans, and the Commander's? "Don't wait too long to report this." Some time with the body before it was dissected or burned was all she could give him. "I need to call Ritsuko."

Who wasn't picking up.

Who also hadn't locked the various security doors behind her when she went deeper into the off-limits areas of the medical wing.

Who may have shot Gendo Ikari, Misato found when she dragged the body she'd almost tripped over into a lit area.

Normally, Misato would have thought something along the lines of 'Go, Rits!' or that she deserved a medal for that, but there was something, like a sound on the edge of hearing that filled her with a sense of impending doom.

Exactly what kind of doom? Misato knew that for sure when she kept heading forward, even though she _knew _she should pull back, try to find heavy lead radiation shielding in case that helped, or bring up Shinji in his Eva.

No, the Eva's AT Field might not be any protection, not when the Evas were built as tools for Third Impact. Was that the missing piece? Was that the only reason they were still alive, that it took some time for humanity to be 'called' as the next in line after that angel died? What if the attraction had hit Shinji while he and Kaworu were still in their Evas? It would have been over then and there, she was sure of it.

Even though she couldn't stop walking forward, hoping that the need to find out what they were dealing with wasn't just an excuse, she still managed to open up her cell phone.

When she knew she was close she closed it again, because she heard sounds coming from behind that door and she couldn't do that to her friend.

Even if she couldn't bring herself to harm the thing that looked like Rei, what she _could _do was knock Ritsuko out. If they all survived this, the memory of what she'd been doing to Rei, in this room full of implements, would be bad enough without letting it go on any longer.

The thing that looked like Rei only stared at her, because both of them knew that this wasn't quite a rescue.

Even half an hour ago Misato would have let herself hate the girl, been as cruel to her as Ritsuko was, but now the other angel's death was etched in her mind, now she knew that they were victims too.

Not that being gentle made what she was doing, what she couldn't stop herself from doing, any better.

* * *

The white things that looked like Evas: Shinji couldn't even try to fight them, not when they felt like him.

When Kaworu (or something that looked like him?) appeared, all Shinji could do was smile, so grateful, and feel his heart and soul surge forward into that embrace.

* * *

The reunion didn't quite go like he thought. "How could you just do that?!"

Shinji bent over, clutching at his stomach. He didn't think they were in their real bodies in this freaky place, so how had Kaworu broken a rib?

Red eyes full of dangerous fury, the other boy followed that up with a punch to the jaw and a heel-strike that sent Shinji to the ground, where Kaworu could kick him so that he was lying on his back and slam his foot down again, right where he'd hit before.

Yeah, Shinji thought, veteran of several Eva battles. Definitely at least a cracked rib, and if Kaworu kept pounding on it like that, it would break before too much longer. Perforated internal organs thanks to bone shards were _not _fun.

"I _killed myself_, and then you just rolled over for something those damn old men made by imprisoning my soul, stealing _my _face! Didn't my death mean anything to you! Didn't _I, _me, mean anything to you?! You made my death mean _nothing_, you selfish bastard!"

Ow.

Fuck.

Ow.

"If it weren't for the fact that now that the old men are in here, I get to watch millions of you Lilim tearing them apart for what they did, I would _never _forgive you." Kaworu had already taken his turn: thanks to the AT field time was negotiable inside here. "You had better make it up to me, is that clear!"

Shinji just whimpered.

That seemed to satisfy Kaworu, who backed off. "He's all yours now."

Shinji's eyes widened when he saw a familiar face leaning over him looking mildly concerned. "Rei?"

_This _foot stomped on his balls.

"I also did not die so that you could throw away that sacrifice. You could at least have survived more than two days." That he hadn't was very hurtful. "Many Lilim are also rather upset with you for giving in first and beginning the chain reaction." She grabbed one of his arms: Kaworu took the other and they dragged him up. "We need to remove you from this place before their massed wills overcome our individual power."

Shinji didn't even have time to ask what that meant before he was suddenly submerged in LCL, those hands hauling him to the surface.

The injuries were gone, and that was kind of a relief, since he thought it meant they'd forgiven him. He didn't have much time to be relieved, though, because as they pulled him stumbling up the shore he saw Asuka up ahead.

Cracking her knuckles.

Some days it just didn't pay to come back to life, although even Shinji knew better than to say that in front of these three.


	11. Fig 1

_I like my SF, and I hate High School AUs where they take away the character's powers and challenges, the things that made them unique, and turn it into cookie-cutter pure teenage drama, so yes, if a character has powers, I'm going to explore the limits of those powers and see what weird things can happen. Also, depowering canon characters is a warning sign of badfic nine times out of ten, because sometimes it happens because the author can't create challenge for the character any other way (fortunately, it's hard to solve problems caused by poor social fu via explosions) but mostly it's so that the author's favorite character or OC can look good by comparison. _

The Gods Must Be Crazy_ is a great movie, and also great as a story concept – take a look at Greek or Norse myth. Extremely powerful but immature characters who don't know (or, alternatively, care) about the consequences of flinging that power around are scary. And also hilarious. Although what ends up being frustrating/confusing about Kaworu in both versions is that even leaving background information on Seeds of Life out of it, he's the most powerful of the angels, we see them doing all this stuff, he just waltzes right into Terminal Dogma and there's jack shit anyone can do about it… And then he asks Shinji to kill him, because _Kaworu _is the one with no other choice? Yes, much of the series is about how powerless Shinji is despite being a mecha pilot, because the real problems in his life are things he cannot solve with the Eva, at least not without it being murder, but take manga!Kaworu especially, since he's far more immature and less serene/seeming to have it together than anime!Kaworu. Why not use that power to get back at SEELE in a petty teenage way (although yes, depression will make people think all that is useless, so realism here), why not… _

_A lot of stories explore Shinji being a more active character, using the power he should have as a human being and Eva pilot (…additional sources of power aside). I'm doing Kaworu because I like Kaworu, but also because I like my crack. I really like my crack._

_In a lot of these I've shown him being immature, doing things that I believe are absolutely wrong (consent issues are serious business) or not getting a good ending, but perhaps I should do one where he actually goes evil? And when _we _are talking someone who's capable of killing even an animal quite casually? Children abusing dolls is a sign they need moral instruction stat because the point of dolls is that they're symbols for human beings that are powerless to fight back, so there's a bit of a 'what you are in the dark' there. Kaworu killing a cat that he later explicitly likens himself to when talking to Shinji is an early hint that he's basically suicidal, but what if it was the black cat he's depicted with in some of the art instead of a white one, what if he saw the cat as one of Lilith's creatures instead? _

_Children are bastards until taught otherwise, and raised by SEELE?_

* * *

This must be a breeze, Kaworu thought, sitting in the wreckage of a room that had lost a wall and a bit more, hands dancing on the keyboard with unconscious grace, playing a variation on a song he'd heard earlier on one of the local radio stations (intercepting broadcasts was quite simple: it was all light, after all) as he wandered through the town. The wind wasn't constant like the flow of air from a complex's climate control, and the scents it carried? Even if the taint of LCL made him grimace, reminding him of the tube.

He was supposed to be looking for the Third Child, that or reporting to NERV, but for once in his life there wasn't anyone watching him and he'd found a piano. Right now, he was doing what he wanted and playing it even when he was supposed to be doing something else, and no one had come along to scold him for it and force him to move along with the schedule yet, comply with the way the Lilim had planned out his entire life.

This place, the way the buildings had been smashed? It felt like an omen, perhaps a symbol of how their plans weren't foolproof, how it might be possible to break them, or break out?

The sun shining down on him, heat sinking into pale skin, and oh yes, everything about being outside felt good. This was so much better than being in the tube.

He wished he could just stay here forever, but he knew they would send men after him if he didn't obey and show up at NERV at some point. He could already detect a Lilim's soul fragment coming towards him, although from the amount of light it gave off it likely wasn't one of the old men or their servants. Too much glint to it, too much 'pay attention to me' even if that flickered on and off, between the subdued, barely-there light of those who longed for the destruction of their identities and a light that, while still dim, was more like that of the people he'd seen in this place, people who weren't under the control of the old men.

Although technically they were and didn't know it. How lucky of them.

There was another presence with the Lilim, one of Lilith's nonsentient creations. Even without an identity to protect, or truly aware of existence as an individual, it still struggled to live. Of course the Lilim was ignoring the desperate pulsing of that weak light, and it was silly to be looking to a Lilim for help in the first place. Not that intelligence could be expected of a soul on that level.

The Lilim must be drawn to the sound of the piano, Kaworu thought.

It made his eyes widen to realize that he could just tell it to go away. Provided it wasn't an agent of NERV. The old men ordered other Lilim around all the time, so perhaps he could as well? He didn't necessarily have to leave this place or go back to the path laid out for him just because a random Lilim arrived.

The idea of being able to say no, and have that word matter? It made him tilt his face up to the sun, feeling the air around him and oh, he wanted to stay outside forever. Soak up this warmth, feel the wind that blew where it wished, could change directions a hundred times a day without Lilim forcing it back on its so-called proper path.

He wished he could do that. He would do anything to be able to live like that, to have his life be his own. To be able to hide here in this forgotten place, not relishing a few stolen minutes but being truly outside their reach, not having to fear that they would come here and take him away from this little miracle, this piece of freedom somehow experienced while he was still alive.

If that was possible, he wanted more of it, and it was with that will that he let his fingers leave the keys, took a step forward with arms reaching up towards the sun.

He didn't think, there wasn't any desperate planning or wishing for a solution involved, just instinct and a mental twist, like turning to better catch the light.

Oh, _yes,_ the light felt even better like this, and he could feel the breeze move him now, like fingers dipped into a tub as the water poured into the drain. No, better, since the water was returning to its prison while the wind simply flowed, rushing over the seas and down valleys to rustle the leaves of trees.

So this was why the other angels had never taken human form.

* * *

Well, there was the piano, Shinji thought, but where was the player? He didn't really care, though. He'd been drawn towards the sound for lack of anything better to do, but he hadn't wanted to meet anyone anyway.

They were probably a looter or something, and fled when he showed up. That would make sense.

He probably should feel bad about how devastated Tokyo-3 was but instead he just felt numb, Shinji thought as he sat down on the bench in front of the piano, once again for lack of anything better to do. He didn't want to go back to NERV or go home.

The cat that followed him here stopped outside the shell of the building, under the shade of a small tree. Shinji wondered if it was a maple or something: the shape of the leaves seemed kind of familiar somehow, not that he really cared.

Oh, right, he thought when he finally looked away again from the keys. That was why it was familiar, it was a fig tree. The leaf on the NERV logo was a fig leaf. This house must have belonged to an employee. The figs were green, although some kinds of fig were supposed to be, and he didn't think this was the time of year for them to begin with, but the tree was probably confused by the eternal summer. A lot of plants were.

He watched the cat ripping apart the figs on the ground and lapping up the juice for a bit – they must have fallen off because of all the explosions - before he idly began to play something else. He had to get to NERV eventually, but this wasn't a bad way to kill time. The looter must be long gone by now, and it wasn't like Shinji could go back to school. It wasn't like he could face Hikari or Kensuke, not after his own Eva was used to kill Touji, not after he felt their friend die by his own hands.

There was something nice about it, playing the piano here practically outdoors. Being exposed like this would ruin the piano before too long, but for now? The sound of the wind, the rustling of the leaves… Alright, well, the noises the cat was making weren't really melodious, but it was kind of funny, hearing raw enthusiasm like that. He found himself smiling despite himself, at least until he heard his phone ring.

Misato, it had to be, telling him to get his ass over to NERV. It wasn't like anyone else would call him now, or for any other reason. He sighed as his fingers left the keys, starting to head towards the road but not answering the phone. He'd listen after it went to voicemail, not that it would really tell him anything the sound of sirens hadn't already.

Another angel. Why else would anyone want him around?

* * *

As Shinji headed towards his fate of being forced to pilot once again, Kaworu decided that he wouldn't mind it if the Third Child came back. He wasn't _great_, but music was nice. The cat could definitely stay. The way it had spread out now, belly full and snoozing in the hollow between Kaworu and one of his lower limbs: it was definitely smarter than most of Lilith's children, because that sounded like a very good idea.

It was a good thing he'd guessed right, that the Lilim wouldn't notice fruit appearing the instant his back was turned.

Growing something to be eaten should have felt stranger than it did, like a metaphor for how Lilith's brood tried to consume him. And yet…

The old men made sure he knew _that _story, after all.

Was not Adam given dominion over the animals as well?

Two trees in the garden.

If Kaworu was a seed of life, then why, why should he accept going to his death?

Why not live forever, while those who had chosen the tree of the knowledge of evil, the ability to think of doing things to people like groom them to send to their deaths, died of it? Why not let go of thought and exist in the blissful now? Yes, half his genetic material came from the black seed, but the way they existed, the things they used their minds to think up… Why have any part of it?

Kaworu's mind drifted, content as he'd never been before, silvery-green leaves soaking up the warmth as tiny star-shaped crimson flowers opened, turning to follow the sun.

* * *

It wasn't like Shinji exactly meant to return there. It was just that he couldn't bear to go home, to where Misato would want to talk about it. Not when talking about Rei's death would make it real. So, just like before, he found himself wandering aimlessly through Tokyo-3, because staying in NERV meant Misato could ask Ritsuko where he was, until it started to get dark and he started to get hungry.

He knew better than to think that the piano would still be in tune, but there was a chance the figs might be ripe by now. Maybe that cat would still be there, too.

It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, so even though it meant being in the middle of the destruction he caused it was as good a place as any.

Shinji only knew the general area where it was, but as he walked through the rubble he smelled something sweet. That actually made him grimace: things that seemed sweet and good never were. Probably the figs were overripe and rotting. If there were any animals willing to come back to where the angels attacked, they'd probably eaten all the good ones.

The brown-haired boy's mood wasn't improved any when he got there and found plenty of figs still hanging on the tree. If anything, he was more annoyed to be wrong than glad he'd found something to eat without having to go back and get his wallet, which meant the risk of encountering Misato.

He was even more annoyed to find this was one of the kinds of fig with sticky white sap inside instead of solid flesh: the first one he picked got all over his hands when he took the first bite. That didn't make him go try to clean up instead of reaching for another one: if anything it helped, to have something to glare at, to focus on petty annoyances like how these were way too damn sweet instead of thinking of Rei, and Asuka, and…

Shinji realized he was being ridiculous when idly pressing at the keys to see how out of tune the piano was made him scowl not because he found terribly off-key notes but when he didn't find any serious ones. Since thinking about the fact he was so upset meant thinking about _why_, he hurriedly started playing instead.

As the sun set, he almost found himself wishing the other person who played this piano would come back. If they were a looter, they might even appreciate Shinji making them rich instead of hating him for destroying their home. It would be nice to have company, just… Not company that knew Rei. He couldn't, he couldn't face that right now. Couldn't say it, not when that would make it real.

Caught up in his own concerns as always, Shinji didn't notice that the carpet of moss around the tree had sprung up a little fast since the last visit, or covered up the concrete rubble a little too well when Shinji finally stumbled away from the piano after managing to play himself into exhaustion. Too tired to walk straight, let alone lie awake and think of Rei and Asuka all night, or so he hoped as he lay down beneath the tree.

It didn't occur to Shinji to worry that he might get rained on, not when he was a child of the eternal summer. If there was a serious chance of rain at this time of year everyone would have been talking about how unusual it was, especially the ones old enough to be nostalgic for a time when sudden showers happened.

He realized too late that he should have taken cover under something more substantial than the tree. The morning sun hit like Asuka, and rolling over with his jacket over his head didn't help when the damn birds ignored his groaning and refused to shut up. Even cranking the volume on his music player didn't help, not when a small army of the things had converged on the free food. There wasn't much else here for them: come to think of it, Shinji hadn't seen any other gardens that were doing very well. Whoever lived here had to be really lucky if their piano and their tree had both survived the battles so far, he thought. If they were still alive.

After (temporarily) frightening the birds away from the tree so that he could get something to eat he admitted, "I guess it's not too bad: it's not like there are vending machines left here." At least the syrup inside gave him something to drink.

A country boy, Shinji knew to settle in by the piano to wait for the morning chorus to shut up so he could get back to sleep. Sleeping out in an orchard to get away from home wasn't anything new, even if one half-grown fig tree was a terrible excuse for an orchard. It was just that most orchards out in the country kept the damn thieving birds away, so he hadn't expected it to be so _loud_.

He hadn't expected to wake up again, drowsy with the afternoon heat, to Misato shaking his shoulder. "Shinji-Ow!" she said, sounding more startled and annoyed than hurt when a branch above her shook and dropped a hard, unripe fig on her back. "You left without your phone!" With the angels coming closer and closer together like this? This one had practically followed right on the heels of the last, and they were overdue for another.

"I would have heard the sirens."

It wasn't just that. "I was worried about you. The last three angels have all gone after the Evas or the pilots, and the replacement pilot we were supposed to get never reached us. If the angels know enough about us now to intercept someone even I didn't know was coming, it's too dangerous for you to wander around alone anymore." Misato needed to get him back to NERV while he was still alive. Get him back to NERV and into the lab so she could make sure he hadn't been infected like Touji's EVA or encroached on like Rei.

The missing pilot had thrown NERV and especially the Committee into a panic: security was being cracked down so tight even being let in through the Magi's back door (Ritsuko had shown her the tunnels) wasn't letting Misato get her hands on any more information. Ritsuko had been ordered to report to the Committee, too, and her reaction… Misato didn't like it, especially when the message from the UN had been very clear that Gendo Ikari was supposed to go, and explain what exactly he thought he was doing, throwing away the lance that was the one thing keeping Adam locked away in the bowels of NERV.

Misato wanted to know that too, since it was damn certain he hadn't used it in order to save Asuka.

They were down to only one pilot, and Shinji was… Shinji. Losing Rei like that could only have made him more so. They couldn't reconfigure Unit 02 for a new pilot without having the new pilot here, either, and the so-called 'Marduk Institute' wasn't handing them the name of the next child in line since the Fifth was gone. In theory Misato had thought the next one would be Shinji's friend Aida… Well, ex-friend, now. As for the Fifth Child, when you were organizing a hunt for someone, weren't you supposed to give the searchers some idea of what they looked like? She had less data on him than Rei. Just a name and a birthday, not even a photograph.

A birthday that had every instinct that had ever saved her ass in combat standing up in the back of her head and screaming that there was an ambush coming her way, but maybe someone had taken care of him for her. She could hope that she wasn't the only one Kaji had given this information to, that there were other people out there working to keep SEELE and Gendo Ikari from ending the world.

Well, she could dream, right?

* * *

It figured.

Fifteen years in a Lilim body and not one dream. Then, when he finally abandoned that form, gave up on trying to be a part of the Lilim world outside the walls and tubes and actually managed to _escape SEELE_, because it had been over a week and no one had come along with a holographic projector or an axe?

He finally got to have such a nice dream, and then some Lilim came along trying to run him over in a tank. Maybe it was his fault for shifting a little away from the building so he got sun more of the day, but it wasn't like he was in the way of a clear path! Had they gone out of their way to knock him over?

The first thing he knew about it the weight was already pushing him down, forcing this sapling form to bend, and he'd damn well had enough of _that_. So he'd hit it away from him, and it wasn't until he'd tuned into the radio chatter that he woke up enough to realize that right, he probably should have just let it push him down and stayed down, because it wasn't normal for Lilim trees to send tanks flying, and although according to the old men Lilim weren't very observant creatures and often tended to ignore anything that didn't fit their view of the world lest they be thought mad, he'd just done that in front of an entire army, so his odds of not being noticed were…

Yeah, he thought, as he repelled bullets with the light of his soul. Not a chance. The Lilim would definitely tell the old men about this, too. So many Lilim: they must have called them out to hunt for him.

…So why were the voices in the radio chatter _surprised_ when he left his tree form behind, and with it that dream of sleeping the ages away there, left alone and forgotten?

Hmm? Kaworu tilted his head up, using his field to shade his eyes from the glare.

Apparently he wasn't the only person tossing around tanks here. "By the way," he said, cutting into the radio chatter a couple minutes after tapping into the news broadcasts, "it's not just Gendo Ikari who's trying to use the Evas to cause Third Impact: it was those creepy old men on the Committee for Human Instrumentality that triggered Second Impact. They and the Ikaris were part of SEELE, but then Keel and his daughter had some sort of fight about whether you Lilim should all be turned into a giant blob here or a flying Eva in space or… something. That was when I was little, and they weren't supposed to bother me with it anyway." He tilted his head to the side, watching the nearby Lilim. At least a few of them had stopped firing, although that probably meant they were waiting for orders, not that they were going to leave him alone.

Something he found in NERV's record of intercepted radio chatter, after decrypting it himself, bothered him a little. "…You were given orders to terminate all the pilots, including the Third Child? Well, it's not as though Keel trying to order me to observe him means he cares about his grandson or anything. Not when he believes that compassion is another curse upon you Lilim." Kaworu had heard that speech a few times, and got the feeling somehow that Keel was looking at _him _when he said it, which made absolutely no sense when Kaworu wasn't a Lilim to begin with. The order to observe the Third Child hadn't made any sense either until he decided to scan the younger Lilim's DNA so he could recognize him even when asleep. He might let Shinji have fruit since he'd earned it by coming and playing the piano, but he wasn't going to let any other Lilim tear off pieces of him. Knowing that Julia Keel and Yui Ikari were the same person made a lot of overheard half-conversations make much more sense.

"I want to go back to sleep, but I guess Third Impact is my problem too, unless I get out of range…" He looked thoughtfully at the Eva that had tossed that tank overhead. "Well, it's not like you'll leave me alone until there's no more risk of Third Impact, so I might as well destroy the Evas." Not that he really minded the idea.

"Like I'll let you lay a finger on my mother!" Asuka told the angel what he could do with one of her own fingers.

Oh, she did _not _just… Kaworu bared teeth that were still as dull as a Lilim's in an expression that was not a smile. "Second Child… I don't have any quarrel with you, but Dr. Sohryu used to take tissue samples and test my regeneration without anesthetic, yet there was always plenty of anesthetic to threaten me with if I wanted to stay out of the tube even a little longer. Treat me like a monster because I was born from Adam, and then turn around and put herself into a body made from Adam? I think I'm going to remove some of _her _limbs 'for the benefit of humanity,' so these other Lilim can execute her for trying to kill them all, like the monster _she _is." With their tiny guns, like her tiny knives. "I _was _going to pull you out of there first, but if you insist on defending that monster, then _you _can experience a fraction of what your precious mother did to me." The second time he bared his teeth for a moment, it really was a smile.

"SEELE created the Eva from Adam because you Lilim were too weak to fight the other angels on your own, not with only fragments of a single soul divided among billions of you. They created and trained _me_ to defeat the Evas and reach Lilith as part of their scenario. You might have opened your heart to the Eva for the first time, you may be stronger than before, but NERV Germany's Magi were the closest thing I ever had to a toy, your simulation data the only 'game' I was ever allowed to play. I know every single one of the hundreds of holes in your technique. Give me an Eva and I could kill you in two moves using only its AT field, and right now I could kill you with a _thought._ And that mother of yours? The woman you think cared about you, who's supposedly going to protect you? _She helped set up that system_. _That _was the real reason she wanted to make sure _you _became NERV Germany's Eva pilot. So that there wouldn't be any risk at all of her Eva barring the way of the Final Messenger, SEELE's so-called tame angel!"

Oh, right. "Actually, I don't need an Eva _or _the light of my soul to take you down. Let's test it, your mother's love for you versus her dedication to SEELE's scenario and the false hope of instrumentality."

NERV's own cameras picked up Misato Katsuragi's look of realization a fraction of a second before she leaned forward to order, "Asuka, don't let him lure you out of the lake! Without the water to protect your power cord from their fire…"

"Actually I thought she'd be halfway here and running on battery power by now, after the other Lilim took out her cord. Maybe she's grown up a little since the last round of tests." Not that it would do her any good. "Child of Adam and Servant of the Lilim. Launch eject your entry plug."

Well, he thought, he supposed he had better go catch her. Yes, there was a chute attached to the entry plug that would be automatically deployed, but when the other Lilim here had shoot-to-kill orders? It wasn't as though he liked the Lilim that had budded off from the piece of Lilim incarnated as Dr. Sohryu, given his experience with Lilim in general and Sohryu in specific, but he did feel somewhat responsible for her.

It wasn't like he _disliked _her, either, not when she was… _the _only person he'd ever had experience of, if not contact with, that wasn't just a mouthpiece of the old men. She was their servant, yes, but in ignorance. The way she wanted to fight… It wasn't as though he would be upset if the other Lilim killed her, but he _was _the one who had forced her out of her protection and put her in danger.

Of course he regretted going to her aid when she punched him in the face a handful of seconds after he opened up her entry plug midair. It wasn't that the punch even ruffled his AT field, it was that, "That's a poor way to repay me for saving your life." He looked down at the ground and the Lilim soldiers who were headed to the probable landing sight. After she'd killed other Lilim soldiers, he presumed they would obey their orders to kill her.

"Saving my-" Her next punch wasn't aiming for his _face_. By that point Asuka was halfway out of the entry pod, hanging on to the edge of the opening with one hand and a foot as they continued to fall through the air.

Her tenacious ferocity, the way she could let herself openly hate her obstacles and dedicate herself to destroying them, even in simulations: he'd envied those traits, just a little. "You play instruments." According to her file. It was an extremely flimsy justification for why she was worth saving, but did he need a justification even for something as unwise as saving Lilim?

"What does that have to do with-let me go, you…"

"Go ahead, you can insult my mother as much as you like," he assured her with a smile as he pulled her out of the entry plug. "I don't have one in the biological sense, and the woman who had the most involvement with my development was Dr. Sohryu."

Her foot was quickly jammed between his neck and shoulder, another braced on his waist as she tried to yank his arm out of its socket. In midair. He wasn't sure why, exactly, but he didn't want her to die. "The Lilim have orders to kill everyone here, but especially you pilots, on sight. Do you really think they'll believe an angel if I vouch for you and say you weren't _knowingly _helping Keel or Ikari destroy the rest of this planet?" he asked her as he landed and Lilim moved to surround them at something of a safe distance.

"What the hell are you calling me?" Asuka demanded, trying to stamp on the toes of his school uniform shoes.

"You. The Thirteenth Angel, Lilim, born of Lilith instead of Adam. Your AT fields, what you call the light of the soul, are so weak because you have one soul spread out among billions of people. I guess I was hoping that you'd wait your turn, because you weren't supposed to try to merge with Adam or Lilith yourself until after I was dead, but you are much older than me, and I'm born of both seeds, so perhaps SEELE had the order of precedence wrong. Or Keel just decided that he'd better make his move before Gendo Ikari made his according to Julia's scenario." He shrugged, attention mostly focused on both fending her off as she tried to figure out ways to grab or damage him despite his soul's power and the Lilim surrounding them. "You aren't someone who gives up easily, but you should. You aren't the only one the German facility was training for this time, remember. I know how to use the light of my soul, while you didn't even know what an AT field truly was." Why was he bothering? He'd seen how she reacted when people told her it couldn't be done, or they were better than her.

He wasn't really annoyed by what she was doing, oddly enough. Standing still here while the redhead climbed on him and tried to punch some holes in him: ah, yes, she was like those squirrels. There was also something rather nice about having a Lilim angry at him and realizing that she really didn't have any power to get back at him for it, that he was the one in control here and didn't need to be afraid. Dr. Sohryu's daughter trying her hardest and failing to maim him for this felt like proof that he really wasn't helpless anymore.

Kaworu could already feel this body beginning to turn on itself without the medications, but he could turn into another form and then change back into a copy of his Lilim body before the decay got too advanced, now that he could change his shape and the matter that composed him.

Well then, since he could simply hide from the rest of the Lilim, the only real problem left was Unit 01, which would be more of a pleasure than a prob-

Incoming aircraft carrying more flesh born of Adam, not ensouled but somehow possessing enough of an echo, a reflection of that light to use an AT field in combat. "Damn old men… What do they think they can accomplish now? I'm not going to let them use my soul for this and Lilith's vessel died," provided the report of the battle on SEELE's mainframe was accurate, but Kaworu had heard more than enough about Gendo Ikari not to trust anything that came from NERV.

His red eyes met Asuka's glaring blue. "They'll have been loaded with my combat data, but they won't actually have the strength of my AT field. More than half my training was against theoretical Evas with weaker AT fields, so I _should _be able to do it." Despite any distractions.

"What are you talking about?" the Second Child demanded as other Lilim pointed their guns at them and waited for someone to tell them whether or not they should waste the bullets.

"It's not fair that I've studied your fighting style for years but you don't know how to deal with me, right? I'll show you how I fight. It's either that or I try to get into NERV far enough to find someone to babysit you before SEELE's Evas get here."

Babysit? _Babysit?!_ "Die, engel!"

Kaworu wondered why the other teenager was so willing to touch him now, in fact she was being rather insistent about it, when before Lilim had always hesitated to touch the angel unless it was necessary, whether it be out of fear, distaste or reverence. Still, having her wrapped around him wasn't an unpleasant feeling, although it certainly would be if her hands were applying that pressure on his actual windpipe instead of having the force of it sapped by his AT field, and it was definitely pretty funny.

No, he realized a few minutes later, the word for this was fun. The presence of the Lilim surprisingly improved the experience, and not just because of the ineffective death threats. So this was 'showing off,' what he'd been accused of whenever he had a little fun with the simulations instead of working on improving his speed and effectiveness.

Realizing that the thing one of them threw at him after he'd taken out the first two the boring way (projectiles aimed for their cores: control over a Sea of Dirac made it simple to boost object velocity to near-relativistic speeds _and_ instantly change their trajectory – he made a note to look up what one of the UN Air Force officers observing the battle said, something about portals) at him was a _lance_, even if it was a weaker, Lilim-produced knockoff of a lance was a shock, but since he was already in midair and much smaller than an Eva it was simplicity itself to first dodge it and then take control of the weapon the Eva had so foolishly discarded himself. Along with the two lances belonging to his already-fallen foes.

"Why can't I control these Evas?" he wondered, wrenching another lance out of a fourth's hands and calling it to hover in front of him so that he could unsheathe it, revealing its true deadly form. "They aren't made of Lilith's flesh like Unit 01 and they don't even have souls of their own, much less souls with enough power to defy me."

For the benefit of his one-Lilim audience, he added, "It's not that I can't crush them, I just like the idea of turning SEELE's other creations against them. I did wonder how strong you would be if you opened your heart to the Eva, it was frustrating watching how limited you were because none of them would tell you enough of the truth to give you a chance of surviving. If you want a rematch, stop screaming for a minute and let me concentrate: I'll give you one of these Evas if I can catch them."

"You think I'd trust an angel's Eva? After what happened to that…" It wasn't right to call Suzuhara just a jerk, not anymore, not when he'd died. Not like that, not even given the grace of a warrior's death. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"Why would I lie to you?" he wondered. "I hate the way the old men deceive everyone: doesn't it make you angry that you were being used, all along? They told you that they needed you, that you were going to save the world, and the entire time they were working to make sure that you failed. It's not fair to either of us, and it's not like I'd need to sabotage your Eva in order to defeat you," he pointed out as he speared one of the Evas with three lances, using the fourth to keep the others at bay, then forced the three of them apart, twisting at the Eva's flesh until even wave particle matter gave, separating the portion of the body containing the core from the entry plug, then using two of them to saw the entry plug open while the other finished off the core once it was too far away to destroy the contents of the plug. "Why is my name on the side?" He froze when he saw the body inside. "Why…" Why did it have his face? "It's… connected to my soul. The way all of you Lilim share a single soul, but there's no mind. They're leeching off me, off _my _soul, to control these things?! What, one pawn wasn't enough for those damn old men?"

Shock and sheer revulsion made him blast everything away from him, both the hollow mockery of him and his identity and the Lilim, the fragment of the being that had _done this_. He had enough presence of mind to send a still-sheathed spear to catch Asuka before she fell too far, but, "As for you… Stealing not just Adam's body, but even this weak shell you forced me into, even this?" Even this face wasn't his? "Stealing the power of _my _soul, all the strategies _I _invented?" Because those were _his _moves they had used, his techniques: they must have taken the simulation data and loaded it into them. "Be _damned _ like the spawn of darkness you are, you scheming Lilim! I'll show you that the power of my soul, of my _self_, isn't something you can just take for yourselves! I'll destroy everything you've ever worked for, the quest you've dedicated your entire lives and sacrificed so many of the lives of your other selves for! You will _never _have instrumentality, and you never could have! Not when _you _would have died in the instant of the merge, but you were too power-hungry and afraid to face that truth! Die, old men! You will _die,_ whether I kill you, the Lilim you slaughtered do or you suffer the weakness of the black seed until the end, chained to mortal, always-dying bodies like the one you used to cage me!"

He realized that the pulse he sent out to slam all of them down against the hard surface of the Black Egg, pinning them down so that their own weapons could pin them like butterflies, like Adam, pierced through the core, was a little much when all the radio and satellite signals he'd tuned into abruptly stopped, leaving NERV's EMP-hardened facility as the only source of transmissions in a direct line of sight.

The young angel realized that he'd _fucked up _when he saw the burn that stripped the skin off Asuka's face, leaving her struggling to breathe. The light of the soul was _light_, electromagnetic radiation, one of the fundamental forces, and angels were cosmic beings. Still, he'd known not to send out cosmic rays since… As long as he could remember. Forget the tube, they'd entombed him in _lead _until he could control the light he gave off.

He'd been so angry he'd, he'd hurt people he hadn't meant to harm. At least the Lilim further away should be safe, he hadn't devastated an entire hemisphere in his rage the way this soul had when it belonged to Adam, but he felt something cold wrapping around him inside, binding it so tight it was hard to breathe, a weight of remorse pulling him down.

Shame, that had to be the name of this emotion. The root word of mortification was death, but, "It's okay, I can still fix this," he told himself as well as her. Asuka was the closest, and all the other Lilim outside here were wearing armor: as long they let him heal them in time they'd be okay, right?

His hands still trembled. Not just this, but all the Lilim here trying to kill here, SEELE's puppet-Evas, Arael… She wasn't his friend, but the old men were right about one thing: Lilim were so fragile.

So he summoned the fruit of the Tree of Life to his hands, tore at it enough to pour the juice into her mouth. She didn't need to, "Swallow," but it would help: he could already see the skin on her face begin to repair itself as her genetic code was rewritten just enough to allow her body to draw on the power of the light of her soul.

She opened her eyes, still stubborn enough to demand, "What are you doing to me?"

"_I'm _not doing it to you: this is medicine. Do you _want _me to take control over your body in order to heal you? Because I will, I'll infest you if you don't swallow the rest of this," he said, meeting her eyes with just as much stubbornness. It wasn't something that should matter, but when he was already more than a little dug into her body, just to make sure that she was healing, he might as well tell her that he'd found, "We both have the same human male genetic donor. I don't know how Dr. Sohryu managed that, but it's true. Even _I _don't know who it was, but_ someone_ must have come up with the idea of impregnating my father with Lilim DNA and processed it. I'm almost sad it looks like the Lilim already finished killing her since it means I can't ask. Almost." Pretty thoroughly, too: they'd brought explosives and must have planned for the incineration of an Eva's flesh. They'd probably burned it like that so no one could get their hands on Adam's DNA and grow another one. Some of them were already dousing the exploded remnants of the mass produced Evas with liquids that were probably flammable, even as they staggered.

Damn, he had to hurry, he had only the vaguest idea of how much radiation Lilim could endure for how long, and without any idea how much power he'd given off?

He didn't _want _to give Lilim who had agreed to murder people on SEELE's say-so immortality, but there was at least some chance they'd eat a fruit as opposed to _no _chance that they'd hold still and let him encroach on all of them. If some of them were going to insist on dying instead of being trespassed on, a desire Kaworu sympathized with despite how responsible he felt, better it be by choosing not to take the cure, which meant it was their own stupid hate that would kill them, than by shooting themselves when he was linked to them.

And of _course _frying the radios meant he couldn't just use that to tell them all at once why an angel was tossing fruit at them. They'd think it was bombs or who knew what unless they knew that story. Everyone at SEELE knew it, and the fig leaf was NERV's symbol, so perhaps?

Unit 01 appeared, berserk and covered in bits of some crystallized red stuff that wasn't LCL before he was satisfied he'd gotten them to everyone. He'd just dumped piles in the middle of the biggest groups of Lilim to start with, but a lot of them had been spread out as scouts or couldn't move. _Those _he was just going ahead and feeding, like Asuka, since the only way to wake them up to ask them would be to encroach on their minds, and Kaworu thought that was just as bad or even worse, someone intruding on the sacred territory where no one may trespass.

After destroying the Eva and fishing Shinji out of the Eva plug, the way the pilot jumped for his throat proved that the Eva wasn't the only one that went berserk.

Kaworu found himself disappointed because this probably meant Shinji wouldn't visit him again, not to play the piano.

With an _axe, _maybe.

He was standing there trying to think of what he was going to do with the berserk Lilim attached to him like a limpet, except trying to tear his arms and legs off, for the second time that day when he suddenly sensed the power of Lilith. Pale hand covering closed red eyes, Kaworu sighed. "I forgot Gendo Ikari, didn't I." _Damn_. Someone a Keel would choose as a mate, and someone the old man considered dangerous enough to warn Kaworu about him and order the angel to try to thwart his inevitable schemes?

He'd been so close to finally being done here so he could go back to sleep too, he thought, as he found himself floating down the path he'd traveled in far too many simulations. "I didn't _want _to go to Terminal Dogma," he complained, even though Shinji didn't seem to be in a state to understand his words, let alone believe them. He still said, "I don't _want _to trigger Third Impact: that means no more me, or the rest of you, or pianos, or-Ow!" Putting even a fragment of power of true power behind his AT field was enough to force Shinji's teeth away from his shoulderblade, but managing to draw blood just made the Lilim growl and attack him more enthusiastically, clinging to the front of Kaworu's body as flew towards his hated destiny.

"You Lilim really do want to touch people you hate a lot more," the angel said, shaking his head at Shinji. Had Julia Keel driven her son insane or something, so he'd keep trying to destroy the angel or do something to trigger instrumentality even after she was gone? Unless there was something funny going on with her, like the way Lilith's soul was obviously still here even though it shouldn't be. The Eva inhabited by the old man's spawn should be dead by now, Kaworu trusted. The Lilim seemed to know what they were doing when it came to destroying things with fire, so he hadn't minded leaving it to them while he kept throwing fruit around after he took her down and removed the pianist.

He just hoped Asuka wasn't in too much trouble. Shinji had eaten the fruit days ago, so even if he could use the light of his soul offensively already, by using it to reinforce his bite, that didn't mean Asuka could use it to defend herself anytime soon. Even if she should already be able to heal bullet wounds, that didn't mean they didn't hurt.

Kaworu winced, remembering his own experience healing bullet wounds as part of his training and testing. No, even if she was Sohryu spawn, she wasn't… she hadn't known, that was obvious from the way she fought. She didn't deserve that, even if she was as selfish as all the other Lilim. If it weren't for the rising power of Lilith's soul and the way something kept trying to make it shift configuration into an anti-AT field, he might even go back and get her in order to make sure she was safe despite how awkward it would be to have _two _Lilim attached to him like this.

It took only a moment's flicker of will to disable the electronic lock, but it took a much longer moment to steel himself to go down in there. He didn't _want _to.

He didn't want to die.

But it might be too late to get out of range now, and even if the Lilim had always made it clear he wasn't one of them, so this wasn't really his responsibility at all…

Well, there was Gendo Ikari, along with Lilith's host and a dead Lilim. He'd stuck his hand into Lilith's host-

"What are you doing to Rei?!" Shinji screamed, suddenly regaining the ability to use words as he dived off Kaworu to tackle the older Lilim.

Only to be backhanded into a wall, which worried Kaworu much more than it would have if the closest wall wasn't a couple hundred meters away.

Adam: he sensed the flesh of Adam from that Lilim! Adam's flesh in his body, Lilith's soul in the copy of her other host – Kaworu silently bared his teeth when he recognized that this was the same thing as the clones of his body and what that meant – and the soul of an angel, Gendo Ikari's own piece of Lilim.

This must be Julia Keel's desired means of initiating Third Impact. Lilith-borne souls in immortal flesh born of Adam: it fit what she'd done by taking a body born of Adam herself.

That, of course, was when he was physically assaulted by a Lilim for the third time today. Fourth if you counted the tank, since Kaworu wasn't really going to count the bullets. Especially since he hadn't even bothered to register how many Lilim were shooting at him.

If an angel born of Adam survived, with their more powerful soul, they would direct the merge. Since Gendo Ikari must have only now realized that Kaworu was still alive – otherwise he would have started trying to kill him before triggering Third Impact – the Lilim knew enough to know that he'd have to fix that oversight before he went back to sticking his hand into Lilith's host (Rei, that was her name, like Kaworu was his) and feeling around for her core.

The reminder of a certain Lilim woman's fondness for exploratory surgery didn't help Kaworu's fury at what the old men had tried to do to him, catching his soul in a mindless body if he refused to do their will, and what _this _old man had tried to do to someone just like him. Well, not just like him, the other was Lilith and thus the Lilim were all her fault, including the way they'd rather hurt or molest other people than anything else, but close enough to make him even angrier.

Even though he'd been trained in several forms of combat that didn't require using his AT field and giving away his true nature, Kaworu didn't know the first thing about street fighting. That was why he got the impression that Gendo was an even worse fighter than Shinji instead of better than Asuka. Street fighting was about savagely taking advantage of human vulnerabilities not necessarily to kill them, since that came with the serious jail time, but to cause them enough pain to surrender like the bitches they were.

Kaworu's training had been centered around the efficient killing of Lillim and angels, and he had an AT field that left Gendo's hands uselessly scrabbling a few inches away from his face when he went for the eyes in a way that made Gendo scowl since he, unlike Kaworu, recognized the resemblance to something that'd happen in an incompetent catfight.

The angel's AT field had been so weak and close to his body when it was Shinji because he'd had Shinji there while he drowsed and was subconsciously expecting nice music instead of pain. Kaworu wasn't going to trust one of the old men; he'd have to be insane. Especially since Gendo had Adam's flesh within him and Kaworu didn't want to die. Like _hell _he was letting Gendo anywhere near _his _core, letting the damn old man use him instead of Lilith's host!

There were large slabs littered throughout the LCL, probably left over from when the Lilim had first broken in here to find Lilith. Since Kaworu wasn't a Lilim and thus found the idea of touching people he hated properly repugnant?

He liked the way Gendo's eyes widened when he saw the massive piece of reentry-hardened stone rising behind Kaworu, glowing with the light of Kaworu's soul.

Those with flesh born from the tree of life might be immortal in the sense of 'without death,' unlike Lilim whose bodies constantly decayed, but that didn't mean death couldn't come from outside them. In the form of a few tons of rock smashing them flatter than a pancake, for example, although the first time Kaworu lifted up the rock to see if Gendo was dead yet the still-berserk Ikari spawn had sunk his teeth into Gendo's ankle, so he had to move the rock over a little in order not to crush the other Lilim. Kaworu empathized with anyone who wanted to hurt the old men, so it really wasn't much bother to let Shinji torment him a little. Even if it was safe for Kaworu's body to eat meat Kaworu wouldn't have wanted to actually consume any chunks ripped out of one of _them_. Who knew where the ancient Lilim had been?

Perhaps Lilim were closer to the animals the First Ancestral Race were descended from, and that was why they had the impulse to wrap themselves around their prey and take them into their bodies instead of staying back and using a rifle or something, lest they be contaminated? That was definitely smarter when dealing with an angel who could encroach on their killer.

Kaworu relaxed a bit after he felt the Ikari's core break, especially once it occurred to him that if the Ikari had consumed Adam's flesh, that must have been Adam's original core. Yes, he was definitely safer with that gone.

Having been raised without any sense of fair play, and raised better than to leave an enemy alive behind him, he wasn't tempted to leave the Ikari for Shinji or the other Lilim to finish off. Not when he was one of _them_, and might be able to pursue some scheme even when he lay dying.

Core, brain, and then Kaworu landed to watch for any signs of regeneration.

"You're like me," Lilith's host, who had watched the entire battle in neutral silence, said wonderingly.

Kaworu nodded. "Yes, we are the same." They stood in silence for awhile, except for the sounds of the LCL washing against the rocks down here and Shinji's continued effort to kill Gendo deader than dead. "…Do you want to sleep with me?" Kaworu finally offered after he was pretty sure the Lilim really had been finished off, or else he would have started regenerating by now. Other Lilim would get here eventually, and if the angels were gone when they got here than those Lilim could focus on disposing of the body and such. "I know a very nice place to sleep."

Kaworu might have expressed the hope that they would cut off Gendo's head and bury him at a crossroads with a chunk of toxic wood blocking the regeneration of his vital organs, but they'd never let him watch any vampire movies.

It wasn't like Rei had anything better to do. With almost all the memories of her existence as a false Lilim gone, most of her impulses came from Lilith's residual instincts. According to them sleeping through the eons was exactly what she was supposed to be doing, so she nodded and took his hand.

* * *

_Yes, this is supposed to be a oneshot collection, but I split this one in two for length. _

_Terrible pick-up lines... but for a subspecies supposed to be sealed into sleep both during long space voyages and after seeding life on the new planet? Kaworu and Rei waking up again intermittantly is the odd thing._

_The writers of the Bible probably envisioned the Tree of Knowledge as a pomegranate tree, but that leaves the question: what kind of tree was the Tree of Life? You see apples of immortality in Norse mythology, it's peaches in Chinese… I ended up going with a fig because it's NERV's logo (until Rebuild) and we certainly know there was at least one fig tree in the garden: Adam and Eve must have gotten those leaves somewhere. _

_We had a fig tree with that kind of fruit at my elementary school. It was amusingly messy. Since a theme here is the messyness of life (when the manga can describe love in such a way that it sounds like a disgusting sensation?), it seemed to fit better than some more convenient fruit._


	12. Fig 2

_I this is the second half. I think I need to remember 'one idea per oneshot.' Sometimes I'm thinking 'so what happens now?' and another shiny idea occurs to me, and I go 'let's go with that.' _

_Well, random stuff happens: such is life. It would be nice if there was a 'one inconvenient thing per day' limit IRL, but never going to happen._

_The Dr. Sohryu thing happened because Kaworu and Asuka both have anonymous male (human) genetic doners - the closest thing we have to an ID for either of them is that Asuka's was supposed to be from a sperm bank. Shinji's parents were on the Antarctic expedition - they left just before it went boom. So, why not have the other Eva creator in on it? And if she was going for an ideal child, I doubt SEELE would have used non-optimum DNA for their designer angel, so..._

_Also, since Shinji and Rei, Kaworu and Asuka are the other two pilots, so it would be interesting for them to mirror the others in that respect. Also, Asuka getting in on Shinji's 'yeah, your parents were actually totally evil and plotted to fuck you over' bit of drama/connection to the truth of what the hell is really going on. _

_Because Asuka finding out that actually, her mother really loved her all along is as... unusual in the story of Eva as someone showing up and sympathizing with Shinji's pain, much less liking him. You just know that massive ow has to ensue. In the ending movies, it's that the power of love gets curb-stomped by the power of mad science using mindless clones that contain the soul of someone who died in order to avoid causing the end of the human race, so yeah. _

_Also, Asuka's kind of fun when pissed off. _

* * *

"Where is my piano?" Kaworu asked, even though it had never technically been his piano to begin with. He couldn't even say 'finders keepers' because he'd never heard that argument, even though SEELE had made it very clear that their possession of him was _every _point of the law.

Prying up all the mossy rocks was one thing, he knew biohazard containment procedures since he was more than capable of becoming extremely hazardous if he wanted to, but why take his piano? That was just mean.

Oh, right. Lilim.

He could just grow the moss back, he thought, raising a hand to cover his mouth as he yawned, but he had no idea how to grow a piano. It was probably possible to order one online, but he'd have to wait until there was more of a signal web around here for him to hack into.

Until then, sleep, he thought, stretching up towards the sun.

The third Rei looked at him. Ah, so that was how they were going to sleep here in the absence of bedding. Stripped of almost all knowledge of Lilim existence by her recent death, it didn't occur to her that there was anything unusual about turning into a tree, so she just did what he did.

* * *

"Those look like pomegranates, but the tree looks more like an acacia." Black-barked and thorny, too, the polar opposite of the fake fig tree. That one had bark as pale and soft-looking as a birch's, just not shaggy. Smooth and unblemished as a fair maiden's skin.

The girl had kind of… melted towards him when she changed, so now the two trees were, well, not wrapped around each other exactly but in each other's personal space, canopies occupying the same space and making it look like it was a miracle none of their branches had run into each other and gotten warped while they were growing. Tufts of pale and dark green leaves mixed together, but no one was familiar enough with foreign folksongs to quote, "And from her heart grew a red, red rose, and from his heart a briar."

Now that all the Evas were destroyed, no one in the UN's command wanted to provoke the angels until their own house was in order. It wasn't exactly very bright to take potshots at something without any idea what the hell they were actually going to do if the angels responded. Instead, they dug in a minimum safe distance away and settled in to keep an eye on the two of them, even knowing that if the angels did make a move, there really wasn't anything they could do but drop a lot of N2 mines and hope NERV Germany's data on 'Tabris' AT Field was wrong and it worked. If his passive AT field could block subatomic particles?

Their data was wrong about one thing: that AT field wasn't going down. It was weak compared to the amounts of power the angel had been giving off in combat, but even after five days of observation it still hadn't shut off for even an instant. Perhaps it was that SEELE's angel wasn't in a human body anymore with a human brain that started doing different things in its sleep. Before, the angel had been dead to the world enough in tree form that it hadn't noticed that it was in the middle of a full-scale invading army until it was run over by a tank.

"Remember the embryo in the volcano?" Ritsuko theorized. "Lilith and Adam were there for billions of years, and we only have SEELE and their prophecies to say that Adam and the angels would have woken up on their own. Maybe the two of them won't ever wake up."

In Misato's opinion, Ritsuko looked way too happy about that idea, although she was just glad the LCL had kept her friend alive long enough for Misato's team to get down there and call for NERV's paramedics.

She'd gone down there to kill Gendo and save the world: that was Ritsuko's story and she was sticking to it. As long as they were certain she was providing all the information she had on Rei and the Evas, she might even be able to get away with all of it. Turning over all of Kaji's evidence and proof of her own investigations had put Misato in a much more secure position and left her able to testify that no, Gendo Ikari hadn't told anyone squat, let alone sounded them out about joining him in this.

"That's not an option." Tabris had mimicked an old-style nuclear explosion, and it hadn't even tired him out enough to keep him from running around violating the conservation of matter and energy by conjuring up fruit that was actually a delivery vector for an amazingly simple… Did it really qualify as a retrovirus when all it did was tell the body to activate one set of genes and switch off another set? The genes that made that regeneration possible had been there all along, but there was something called 'epigenetics' that governed what genes the cells read and obeyed, among other things. So that was how angels could be genetically identical to humans and yet have such different capabilities.

Either way, they had living nuclear and biological weapons on Japanese soil and currently the two of them were practically unknowns. They'd decided not to destroy the world, and Tabris had seemed concerned for human life, but beyond that no one had any idea what they'd do.

Staying trees was fine, although preferably the angels would hold still while they dig up the trees and put them in some sort of hermetically sealed biodome greenhouse just in case, but if they couldn't count on them staying trees instead of waking up one day and deciding now was the time to destroy the world?

* * *

The first peep they heard out of any of the angels was Kaworu turning back from a tree one morning and stomping over to one of the foxholes to lean over and glare at the soldier in there. "_Stop scaring away the birds_. First you take my piano, and now every time I hear something nice there's that awful horn cutting it off a second later? Don't even think about playing digital recordings, there's no way I could sleep through_ that_. You Lilim only leave in the frequencies that _you _can hear, and it just sounds freaky with half the song missing."

"The birds…" _You could be using them to spread contaminants or possibly a plague, _"This is for their protection, too." When the obvious alternative was shooting them down after they'd fed, in order to collect samples of altered animal tissue.

"I'm not going to poison them, I like birds. They sing, and I like music. Since I'm not anyone's prisoner anymore, if I want to feed birds then I'm going to feed birds. Isn't that something even prisoners are allowed to do? Anyway," he said, folding his arms and definitely looking like a teenager, "If you won't let me have music here then I'll go somewhere I _can _have music. And scaring them like that is just mean to the birds too, isn't it?" From his disgusted expression, he thought that was typical of them, or that a moral argument wasn't going to sway them. "It's not that I like being watched all the time, I'm sick of not having any privacy because of you Lilim. I haven't left because it's too much trouble to find another place when I just want to sleep, not because I _want_ to stay where you can keep an eye on me. I know you wouldn't appreciate it anyway, even if I do want to make sure my own mess gets cleaned up," the radioactivity, "and you haven't killed the Second or Third Children." Even so, there was no point in giving them concessions, not when they'd just take and take. "But the least you can do is stop ruining it for me here, and if you can't even have the decency to do that then I'm leaving."

That said, he returned to the side of the black tree, gracefully growing around it, branches between branches so from beneath the canopy it looked like a latticework of thin wood and rustling leaf.

"_I am relieved the Third Child is safe. He, Shinji, was so happy to see 'me' alive_. _Even if he is that man's son, I think part of me, yes, part of me is disappointed he has not come here." _

"_Mmm. I don't think he's very practiced with the piano, but that didn't detract from it." _Made it more genuine, the sound of someone trying to pick out their way amidst confusion, striving to create something beautiful despite fear, if the fear it would be snatched from him was mixed with fear of inadequacy. "_We could just go get him," _he realized. "_Even if they have all the data the old men and your Akagis had, the things they invented to subdue us presume that our bodies are merely _their _best."_

"_Like the difference between an Eva with only a battery and a cord that can be destroyed, and an Eva with a core."_

"_You're remembering more of your battles?" _Kaworu's question was nothing more than polite interest. If he'd been more awake, the knowledge that it might have been possible for him to come back to himself if he'd been trapped in a replacement vessel would have been reassuring, but for now the sound of the wind in both their branches and the Lilim's pathetically encrypted chatter in response to his expressed wishes were music enough.

"_Thinking of battle is calling them up. I think… I know I should save Shinji, if he needs it." _Rei's voice was as even as it had ever been, her heart as calm as it was when it was standing, stagnant water even though now that calm was because the sun shone on her, because she recalled a Lilim holding out his hand to her and meaning it, protecting her only for her own sake.

She felt how thoughtful that memory made Kaworu. She knew liked it: that was why she'd shared it. The feeling was like being dipped in honey must feel like, everything warm and golden, like sunlight, but also sticky in a good way, the way it would be good if Shinji's hand had stayed stuck to hers. She couldn't remember what happened next, why she'd let him go. So curious, but she'd thought more like a Lilim after spending years as one, so maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe the other Ikari hadn't allowed her to keep him?

Thinking of keeping him, _"…I don't think Lilim are meant to be trees_." For some reason Kaworu really didn't think so, even though being a tree was easily one of the best things ever, up there with music. Oh, right. "_They do like climbing on them, though_." That he could personally attest to, between Shinji and Asuka. "_You evolved them up through monkeys instead of directly spawning them like Adam's children, so they have to, right?" _

"_I believe so?_ _I do not recall being Lilith at all. Since the vast majority of those memories would consist of slumber, I doubt I will ever recall creating the Lilim or any of the events that would have defined the identity of Lilith_."

"…_Sorry." _

"_It is alright._" It wasn't as though he was blaming her for Lilith's actions.

"_Even so… Oh, that reminds me_." Since he'd already been woken up by that damn air horn they used to scare off the birds, he should take care of this now.

"It's _Kaworu_, _Ka-wo-ru_," he told the same Lilim, since they were an officer and hadn't cringed back or done anything else annoying. "So tell the rest of them to stop calling me Tabris. First off, that name was in SEELE's damn idiotic prophecies and second, do you even know what it means? Angel of free will! And choices! They called me that and then they kept insisting that I didn't have any _choice _but to come here and trigger Third Impact, even though that would have destroyed my identity along with all of yours. I _hated _that, it pisses me off more every time I hear it. It's not like Kaworu Nagisa is much better, since it's just letter substitution and character reading code for Owari and Messenger, the Final Angel, but at least it _could_ be someone's name, so it's better than _Tabris_. Damn Keel…"

The Lilim cleared his throat. "I was given additional orders to ask if you would be willing to…"

"Let you interrogate me under the pretense of using it to charge those old men with the crimes they committed. I won't answer anything that isn't relevant, and I want to testify when they go to trial." Not just be 'Exhibit A,' proof they were consorting with angels. "And if what they did to me isn't on the charge sheet _somewhere_, then you can forget it. I'm human too, you know." What happened to him was a crime by the Lilim's own laws, and they'd better acknowledge that.

"If you want to be treated like a human and a citizen of the UN, that means being bound by our laws, including those against hacking military communications," the Lilim was brave enough to say to his face.

Kaworu grinned: Lilim were so slow. "You still haven't repealed my security clearance, although that's probably because you didn't know it existed until now." That record was hidden along with the rest of 'Kaworu Nagisa's' records, even his official ones. "Good luck getting the guy who issued it to own up to it." He wasn't one of the old men, just deep in their pocket. "It's not like I have anything better to listen to, and you _are _talking about me." They wanted him to let them talk about him behind his back? "You _could _have come here and just said all that stuff to my face. While I'm at it, don't call me Adam. He's dead. My father died when SEELE had him raped and blown up. Yes, I have the same soul as him, but you have the same soul as _your _father, Lilim, and your mother, too. It doesn't make you the same person. Saying that I'm nothing but his vessel, that having my own identity doesn't matter, that I'm nothing but a placeholder they can use to steal the power of Adam even after they murdered him in his sleep, those damn selfish old _bastards_…" He gripped the top of the wooden barricade just to have something to clench his fist around, to feel something break.

Anger was a familiar feeling, even if he still wasn't sure what exactly Rei's golden-flowy feeling was. It made his chest feel tight, like anger, but it had also made him hungry, now that he was in human form, anyway. Or maybe it wasn't hunger, exactly? He took a deep breath, getting himself back under control before the Lilim backed away in order to avoid a confrontation when Kaworu had just remembered something else. "Rei would like to see Shinji again. And you can have these." He pulled two of Rei's fruits from her tree with a flicker of his soul and put them on the ground in front of the barrier. "Since you've only got bits of a soul, fruit of the Black Seed will block your ability to access your own AT fields again. Just don't use all of the seeds for research, they're for people who I… if they don't want to be…" Kaworu blushed, ashamed. "I didn't mean to do that. The radiation and the EMP. But that was my doing, so I'll take responsibility for it. I've already cleaned up the radiation, but I wish… I chose death, years ago. I thought it would be my only liberation, the only way to stay myself. I didn't, I _couldn't _realize how horrible a choice that was to make until I figured out that I could hide like this and realized that I had another choice. I never wanted to be the reason other people had to make that choice."

Instead of walking back to Rei's tree he almost fled into light, zipping back there to manifest in that form again, cringing inside.

It was Rei's branches that moved to wrap around him, thorns turning aside so they didn't slice through the delicate bark of a being never meant to have to endure direct, physical assaults. Nor such mental ones, not when they both contained souls not designed to strive and battle for individual survival, like the Lilim, but to grant life without thought of themselves. They shouldn't have needed to think for themselves, not ever, but Kaworu had been faced with an alternative he could not tamely swallow and Rei had tasted the pleasures of individual existence. Such small bites, but that only made her want more, want to ask Shinji if he would hold her hand again, even knowing now what she was.

Made her slip each taste she managed to fish out of the abyss of lost memory past Kaworu's lips, into his mind, because she did want more. Only part of it was that he was her friend: most of it was that she was afraid to try all by herself. Wanted someone to hold her hand through it, even if Kaworu knew even less of how to manage this than she did, even if she had to pull him alone in order to ensure that hand would be there.

But this feeling that might be love tasted like sunlight, like a new world full of promise. It might have made Kaworu's toes curl if he had toes.

"_You could have toes, if you like. I'll grow the moss again, and make sure you turn back before you get sick," _he told her.

"_What about you_?"

In answer, she felt him focus on his body, roots extending deep into the earth, hidden away in the dark and gaining strength from it. Branches reaching up for the sun, leaves spread to catch that warmth that tasted like her feelings for Shinji, like longed-for liberation. That light, full of frequencies artificial lights didn't provide, was proof he was uncaged. "…_Maybe if there's music, but this body loves music as well_."

Rei thought the Lilim must be relieved she was just curling up at the base of the tree instead of going over to yell at them as well. The moss that appeared under her feet was soft, and she gave a small smile when a root came up out of the ground to arch over her, holding her in place not tightly but just to be sure she was there, before going back into the earth. She simply pillowed her head on her folded arms and went back to drowsing.

Maybe now that she looked like herself, Shinji would realize that she still was the same person, even if so many memories might remain lost, and come see her? She hoped she was enough of the same person that he would still like her, anyway.

She was well aware that the only reason Kaworu had invited her instead of leaving her like Shinji and Asuka was that she was not a Lilim. That, and he was lonely too, so anyone would have done. He was just afraid of Lilim still, no matter how brave he had acted with the soldier and no matter how much he enjoyed showing her the memory of provoking Asuka. He had taunted her because he could and because he had enjoyed the rush of fear, enjoyed taking that risk and surviving it.

Kaworu was considerate and pleasant company, but she wished Shinji was here she thought as she shifted so she could wrap her arm around Kaworu's trunk for the sake of having something to hold.

* * *

Via theft from one of SEELE's secret accounts that the UN hadn't found and closed down yet, placing an order online for delivery to a relatively close location and 'thinking with portals,' Kaworu managed to get his hands on a replacement piano a few weeks later, but still a couple days before the Lilim finally gave in to Rei, who had started going over and looking cutely down at her hands in front of the guards every so often, and Shinji showed up.

"Can you get… off me?" Shinji said slowly when he was pushed down onto the piano bench only a handful of seconds after greeting Rei. It wasn't that he had an angel draped on his back that bothered him, it was that it was the wrong angel. "I was talking to Rei."

"You can talk while you play," Kaworu pointed out, still attached to his musician's back, arms around him.

"Not really all that well," Shinji confessed. "I'm better at the cello."

"I'd order one, but I had to give them the account information or else it would have been theft. Once they loosen up and I can start making money, I'm going to hire musicians to play for me around the clock." Students would be relatively cheap, and if he rooted in a college town or one with an active nightlife having music in the moonlight wouldn't be much of a problem. They might request those hours. Not that he would need to worry about money, if they paid him fairly. Not when some of the things he could do with his AT field currently cost millions of dollars for Lilim to do them with the means at their disposal. "Do you want a job?"

"I would like to hear you play, Shinji?" Rei said, sitting on the piano bench next to him.

Shinji was supposed to get information from them, but instead he ended up sitting there trying to play with Rei leaning on his shoulder and the other angel, Kaworu's head on his lap. Rei was getting in the way of his arm a little, but he didn't say that, not when that might have meant that she would move.

"So he's the musician I heard the first time?" he ended up asking Rei, half to find something to talk about and half because he'd thought Rei didn't like him anymore, and now she was with this guy, but she still wanted to lean against Shinji and hold his hand.

He felt Kaworu's nod; Damn, Shinji'd thought from the quiet breathing that the other guy was asleep. "If you hadn't come then and made me think that I wanted to stay here, with the sun and the piano, then I might not have changed. I didn't know I could. Then you played for me." Kaworu smiled up at him. "I liked that omen much better than their damn prophecies. Then you came again, escaping your destiny if only for a single night. I wish I could have kept the Katsuragi woman from taking you back there, but I couldn't be too suspicious."

"Did you hit her with that fig on purpose?" Misato was already pretty sure that was the case.

"She was an agent of one of the old men, forcing you to go fight and get killed on their behalf. You were like me, so I should have done more, but I wasn't really awake," dropping the fruit on her was more lashing out in annoyance than anything, "and I didn't want to ruin my chance at being forgotten here instead of forced to comply with my destiny. It was selfish of me, just to think of my destiny and not anyone else's." Asuka was broken by Arael on the very day he was supposed to arrive at NERV, then Rei sacrificed herself fighting Armisael rather than being forced to merge (just like he would have…)? Being there probably wouldn't have made any difference, not when those were things the old men must have wanted to happen and he would have had to pretend to be an almost-powerless Lilim, but still… He'd thought his death was inevitable, and look at him now.

"Why did you trick me into eating that and starting to turn into an angel?"

Kaworu pouted. "I didn't trick you, you took it yourself. I only_ let _you because you played the piano for me. Don't Lilim normally want immortality? The old men were afraid of dying before they became one and got my immortality, even though that would have killed them either way."

Shinji frowned down at the other boy, who was much more of a creepy albino than Rei, even if they did look a lot alike somehow. "If I'd _known_…"

At much of a surprise as it was to have Rei lean against him, it was even more of a shock to Shinji to have her wrap her arms around him. She had asked to hold his hand that one time, but was she copying the other angel? Was that why she was so… With the soldiers and Misato watching them from a distance, too! It made Shinji blush but even though he'd wanted the other angel to get off, he hoped Rei wouldn't move again.

His annoyance with the world suddenly forgotten, and knowing that Rei wouldn't want them to fight, Shinji asked, "You grew them for that cat, didn't you? The one that was following me."

"It was hungry, and I could, so I did." Kaworu shrugged. "You were hungry, too."

Experience as a cook made Shinji say, "Thanks," because he knew how annoying it was to make something for someone and then have them take it for granted or even more annoyingly, respond to him doing them a favor by finding ridiculous things to criticize him about (coughAsukacough). "I guess." He _had _been a guest, it seemed, so he shouldn't act like a jerk. Not in front of Rei, anyway. And it wasn't like Kaworu had meant to trick or hurt him, even if how touchy he was was just wrong, for a guy. It was like he was the opposite of how Rei used to be, smiling and open.

It might be nice if more of it rubbed off, if Rei kept being close to him instead of moving away from him on the escalators. He still kept an eye on Kaworu, not so much because he was an angel but because he was Asuka's half-brother and Shinji was pretty sure he'd bitten the guy during that whole thing, so on some level he was wondering when he was going to be punched and called a pervert.

When all Kaworu did was fall asleep (again?) with his head still in Shinji's lap, he asked Rei, "Is he _sure _he's related to Asuka?"

"I am wondering that myself," Rei said, patting Kaworu on the head. "But it explains Asuka's fear of not being the best, her need to prove herself, if many of the people around her there secretly considered her weak." Merely a sideshow, a pawn to sacrifice to defeat the other angels, a tool to use for the Final Messenger's training.

"I guess that's true." Had Shinji gotten caught up in someone else's sibling rivalry? Asuka's desperate need to live up to the standard set by a brother she'd never met? "And you're my half-sister."

"I can alter my genetic code," Rei said shortly. "I do not want to live in the shadow of Yui Ikari any longer. I am not her daughter." Therefore Shinji was not her half-brother. Period.

Shinji's shoulders slumped a little. "It might have been nice."

"I do not want to be your sister, Shinji." Her fellow pilot looked even more depressed and rejected, so she repeated herself with the proper emphasis. "I do not want to be your _sister, _Shinji."

"What?"

He looked startled and uncomprehending, so Rei explained herself, red-orange eyes meeting brown. "I appreciate that your heart has room for others, that you continued to reach out to me despite my coldness to you. I sympathize with your feelings of rejection by Gendo Ikari, and I want to hold your hand again."

"What she's saying is that she likes you," Kaworu translated without opening his eyes. "I think I like you too. From the way you play the piano. The pain and uncertainty there, trying to find a way. You have my sympathies as well, which is why I wanted you to live." He pushed himself up, sitting on the other side of Shinji from Rei. "They aren't mistreating you, are they?"

He shook his head. "They're doing a lot of tests, but Misato's watching out for me." And honestly, it was a relief to know exactly what was up with his body. Piloting the Evas: weird stuff had happened to him even before he ate the fruit.

Both Rei and Kaworu's faces darkened when he said tests. "They're not hurting me, really," Shinji said hurriedly. Even though it was nice that Rei wanted to protect him. He'd still rather he was strong enough to protect her. "Oh, and Asuka's fine too. She wants them to let her visit you, but…" Shinji didn't think that was a very good idea. _Rei _pissed Asuka off: he was grimly certain that Kaworu would drive her berserk again just by existing.

"I did promise her a rematch, or a proper match. I just couldn't permit the existence of those Evas." Kaworu scowled, then climbed on top of the piano so he could feel the notes as Shinji played them, the vibrations of the strings resonating in these fragile bones. "You should stay here. We'll protect you from them and their tests, and I'll get you more instruments. I need to get more for Rei and myself, but I wanted the piano first, because if I hadn't played the piano and almost met you, I'd be dead now. So it's lucky." So was Shinji. "You can sleep with us, and we'll wake up and play with you when you get bored. You won't have to be alone despite the barrier around your self."

"S-Sleep with…"

Rei nodded. "Even if you don't want to become a tree, the moss is comfortable. Didn't you sleep here with Kaworu before?"

"Oh, you meant like that." Thank goodness. "I need to go back, or Misato will be worried." Or Misato would come over here and _make _them hand him over. Which did make him a little happy to think about, despite how nice it was to have Rei put her hands on his arm, leaning against him as Kaworu came back down to lean against him other side, catching him between them.

"You saved my life," Kaworu told him seriously. "Even if it was by chance, I value my life, so that means something to me. I think I would like to be friends, but I've never had one so I'm not very sure of how to go about this."

"You and Rei aren't friends?" So what were they, then?

The two of them leaned in front of Shinji to look at each other. "I am not certain," Rei said, frowning. "He is like me."

"Both of us have the souls of seeds, but the capacity for loneliness. Perhaps that's just because we've been awake long enough to get lonely," Kaworu thought. "It's nice to have someone who feels the same way about things, to have someone to enjoy being a tree with. Is wanting to share pleasant things with another part of liking someone?"

"I believe so. I enjoyed sharing my memories of Shinji with you." Feeling the happiness they gave him reminded her of her own happiness. "I like touching you as well as Shinji, but it isn't quite the same." There was triumph in being able to touch Shinji, as well as fear that he would go away or reject her. Kaworu enjoyed contact too much to ever turn her away, not unless she did something truly evil. She didn't think Asuka was an obstacle to being with Kaworu, either. Kaworu liked what he liked, unlike Shinji whose feelings were confused. Perhaps the very clarity was why she was unclear on what exactly she thought of him, because there had never been any particular need to think of it. No need to crave what she already had by her side. Now that she _was _thinking about it…

Shinji would like to blame it on Kaworu, but he wasn't sure which of them started it. If they both leaned in at the same time that just made it worse, because it meant that they were of one accord, that they really were the same, that Rei was connected to someone that wasn't him. That someone could understand Rei when he'd struggled so hard and still couldn't really. If it was because they were both angels, then he'd never go back, he swore to himself. He'd use the change Kaworu was responsible for to take Rei from Kaworu.

Yet even so they were beautiful together like this, reaching for each other, Kaworu's hands cupping Rei's face, the kiss slow and tender until they broke apart with a little laugh from Kaworu. For a moment Shinji hoped that he was laughing at the idea of the two of them liking each other like that, but then he leaned forward again, just a bit, to press his lips to Rei's cheek with sweet affection that seemed more like a girl or a child than a guy.

Their lips didn't move, but Shinji felt whispers at the edge of his hearing as they looked into each other's eyes, and then he found himself being kissed.

He flailed, almost falling off the piano bench, eyes closed in shock when he felt warm breath on both his cheeks, and he hoped it was Rei that licked at his lips. He wanted to say no or something, but what exactly did he say? He didn't want Rei to think he didn't want _her _to kiss him, but "Guys, guys don't kiss guys!"

"Hmm? Alright, then," Shinji heard Kaworu say as the two of them picked him up and flew over a bit to lie on the moss together.

It was a relief that the person who climbed half on top of him to kiss him next had breasts, Shinji could feel them pressing against his chest, so that must be Kaworu stroking his hair and leaning against his other side… but that hum was definitely Rei's voice… Shinji opened his eyes as Kaworu pulled back a little to look at Shinji with a pleased expression, letting Shinji get a look at the white uniform shirt, how tight it was across the chest, strained by some things the boys uniform wasn't really designed to fit.

"This is nice," Rei said, cuddling up to the two of them, and Shinji really, really wished he could forget about the fact there were people _watching _them.

It was a relief when instead of kissing him again, Kaworu poked his shoulder and asked, "Do you play anything besides the piano and cello?"

The other angel wrapped her arms around Shinji again and nodded. "We should all play together once we have enough instruments." She glanced at the piano, and Kaworu seemed to take this as a request.

"You've played for me three times now, and you've only heard me once, so I'll play for you now, Shinji," the white-haired angel said, sitting down at the piano with an offhand grace that didn't seem very feminine but didn't seem especially masculine, either. Well, according to Ritsuko there were male and female trees in some species, but…

"You and Rei are the same… kind of angel, right? And the other angels were trying to get at your bodies, I mean Adam and Lilith's bodies?"

Rei nodded. "Yes, the other angels including the Lilim."

So even though it was weird for someone to turn from a guy into a girl, somehow much more weird than it was for them to turn into a tree, being attracted to them was perfectly normal, right? Or something? Shinji tried to tell himself that, anyway, as Rei sighed. "I wish I had something to feed you. Shinji, would you teach me how to cook?"

"I guess?" Did she want to make him a lunch? No one had ever made him a lunch before. It made him blush. "We'd need ingredients, and a kitchen, though. I don't think they want Kaworu to keep just getting stuff for you guys, at least not without asking first. Maybe I can borrow something?" He knew how to cook at a campfire, so… He carefully didn't say, 'If they let me come back,' because he didn't want Rei to 'threaten not to let him go,' or that was how Misato would hear it. She hadn't wanted him to risk this in the first place, and she had to be really upset by now, Shinji knew as Kaworu continued to play.

_Rite of Spring _was easy to identify, and it was appropriate, since flowers and trees and new beginnings. Kaworu _was _good: Shinji'd thought so from what he heard as he approached. A lot better than Shinji, not that the piano was one of his main instruments.

"It's nice to have music, isn't it? I think I would like to swim, though," Rei mused.

"Musicians, birds, a kitchen, plenty of sun and a lake or a beach," Kaworu said, voice only the slightest bit higher. "Perhaps other trees, too." She smiled softly. "It will be nice to have a home, a place where people care for us and want us to live." Surely that would let everyone there be happy. "Maybe I'll learn to garden, although that might be too much like the story."

"The story?" Shinji wondered.

"Once there was a garden, and in it stood two trees, a tree of knowledge and a tree of life." Kaworu slammed her hands down on the keyboard, a discordant full stop. "But that story has nothing to do with anything, and even if it did, the places both of us were kept were terrible places. Only idiots like those old men would want to go back to any garden to live according to anyone else's scenario. It's nothing but a cage, and having a purpose in life is no different from death, because any story has to end with death, so planning out someone's fate is the same thing as deciding how they die. None of us are condemned to death now, none of us have to tamely accept that fate. I won't, and I won't let them to do that to either of you. Not when it's possible to be alive and free. Not when I am finally dreaming."

She smiled, the smile and her short hair making her look wild and fey, unfettered and all the more dangerous for it, even though those cast-off chains had tried to bind her to end the world of the Lilim. "So many possibilities. Rei and I wonder: what would it be like, to be loved by something like you?"

* * *

_As for why Rei is more Lilith than Kaworu is Adam, identity is a function of memory and personality formed by that memory. While Adam's soul was rather viciously disconnected from his body, Lilith's body remains mostly intact (and in only two bits). Even if Rei's soul isn't in it, it's easily possible to think of that body acting as a 'long-term memory' storage. Without Kaworu there, for him to subconsciously wish that the other person would be like her, carry on her wishes and memories (since joint action, friendship and help counter loneliness, and Rei's awareness of loneliness was key to that scene), instead she would have wished that it carried on _somehow_. Rei III still has enough awareness that Shinji is important to her to ditch Gendo for him at the last possible second even after spending eps/chapters ignoring his existence quite rudely._

_A lot of her memories here are therefore things that she wanted to remember, and she doesn't want to remember the embarrassing stuff, like a certain tsundere moment in the manga where she made it clear she didn't want to be handholdy or familiar with Shinji because he made the mistake of talking with her about how much he wanted Asuka back after spending time at Asuka's bedside and such. And of course Shinji is clueless…_


	13. Day Out

_This is a snippet from what was originally going to be a larger 'verse, something of an AU of Book of Revels, where instead of Fuyutsuki blowing the conspiracy, Gendo Ikari was on the side of the Lilim (yes, it's been done, but it's still an interesting thought), and managed to capture SEELE's infant angel as well as his own. _

_Since Gendo and Yui had more information that Fuyutsuki did, and that information has been shared with the public in this, most regard Kaworu/Tabris as _Adam_, because he contains Adam's soul even if there's no trace of the original mind. And they're aware that although it was SEELE that actually set off Second Impact… _

_Kaworu's been under biohazard containment his whole life and does _not _like Lilim, because in his experience they really don't like him. Rei is his only company, so he's divided between jealous she gets to go outside sometimes, being viewed as not inherently hostile to humanity, and devoted to her since she's the only person he has, the only person in the world that isn't either just another face of the angel Lilim or trying to reach him to annihilate his personality. Obviously, this is just as Gendo planned: as Rei is Yui's clone and Gendo is a bastard to everyone who is neither Yui nor the combination of his and Yui's genes (in this 'verse, he has a soft spot for Shinji because Shinji is essentially living proof/a constant reminder that Gendo and Yui had sex, and lots of it), he's trying to make sure that Kaworu ends up equally devoted to Rei, because of having absolutely no one else who treats him like a human being. _

_The larger 'verse didn't really go anywhere, so I'm posting this under manga AUs instead of anime AUs because he ends up broken in a way that's much more similar to the manga version's emotional desperation (like Shinji) than the anime's acceptance of death. _

* * *

Those red eyes were far more tolerable when they were clouded and dull, preferably with a trace of pain in there, as much as Misato hated to admit the last part about herself. She hated angels, but there was a difference between killing something that was trying to kill you and torturing prisoners.

Like this, though? Vibrant and alive, ignoring her not because of contempt he was too tired to bother to hide but because he was trying to look at _everything _else, eyes dancing from cloud to blade of grass to mailbox, even to the Lilim that were on the streets despite the NERV convoy? Face pressed up against the one-way bulletproof 'glass' of the transport's window, acting like a dog leaning out a car's window, overwhelmed by all the things to see even if he couldn't smell any of it? There was enough pollen in the eternal summer air that he and Rei would keel over without their shots even _if _they were allowed into free-flowing air that wouldn't be disinfected before being released to the outside.

Something like this was no reason to let biohazard containment procedures lapse, as worried as she was about Shinji.

Adam seemed so childlike now, so human, and it made her stomach twist to see Rei sitting next to him, watching him with that smile on her face instead of watching the outside, so happy for him that he could see all this when Misato was used to her schooling her face into a carefully neutral expression, one drawn over fear of offending the Lilim. Offending her 'children.' Rei acted like a battered woman, expecting to be abused by her family. Except with Adam, who was the one that had wiped out half her planet… But then, both of them were angels, and Rei clearly saw Kaworu as her protector, shifting closer to him when Asuka's Eva looked down at the truck, somehow managing to glare suspiciously with that terrible rendition of a face.

Without even having to look at the other angel, Kaworu pulled her to lean against him, blue head next to silver, and started pointing out things to her, things that he'd clearly only seen in the TV and movie collections that were cleared for the angels to watch, or read about in books. Mostly e-books kept on single, disposable readers that were changed monthly and never hooked up to any system after passing through Kaworu's hands: who knew what an angel could hide in paper? They'd have to burn them when they did the next decontamination of their quarters, too.

Why was Commander Ikari even allowing this? It was an unacceptable risk: what if they broke out? Ritsuko thought the idea was absolutely ridiculous: it wasn't like they'd get far before the air, the… the earth itself, the planet Adam ravaged would kill them. Still, Misato didn't trust the damn thing one bit: she _knew _he must want to finish the job. It wasn't genocide to him after all, just murder. He thought they were all masks a single angel wore, so to him there were no civilians. Everyone down to the babies was his enemy, his tormentor, just as much as Misato and Ritsuko.

Yes, she'd seen the look in his eyes when she and Gendo met with him about this: of course Adam would have tried to cut a deal, wouldn't have helped free Shinji from his Eva for free. Misato would have preferred to use Rei, but when Rei was Lilith and Eva 01 was made of Lilith's body, there was too much risk of her getting sucked in too, if Shinji had. Too much risk of Third Impact.

But the angel most likely would have underestimated how much they cared about Shinji, tried to bargain for them to get the UN to hurry up giving them more things to watch, or for them to let Rei go swimming more often instead of anything too bad. Gendo offering this had damn near shocked him fully awake, made him go from a languid little prince that knew that he had his captors over a barrel for once and was going to take advantage of it to a ecstatic little boy offered a trip to Disneyworld.

And _two _little excursions like this? One now, and one after he freed Shinji, if and only if he managed to do it without hurting him and the Eva? Yes, that would definitely give him incentive to save the Commander's son, but even if nothing happened now, he would have time to plan for the other one. Misato really hoped Gendo was lying, that there would be no second trip and that the only reason he'd told Adam that was so that Adam would wait for the second before trying anything, to lure them into a false sense of security.

That was when Kaworu spotted a _bird_, and even though it was a pigeon, rats with wings in Misato's eyes, the way he grabbed Rei and pointed it out to her so excitedly?

It fit the image for him to be disheveled, otherworldly and menacing, not for him to be almost bouncing with excitement. What had Ritsuko put him on this morning, speed? Well, frying his attention span might help avoid the damn thing coming up with any evil plots, but…

She would prefer thinking that this was an act, but there was no way an act like this would benefit him, not when he could basically goodbye kiss the dignity he'd tried to cultivate despite being a prisoner that spent most of his time as a test subject or watching TV after this. It wasn't like this would make them underestimate him enough to cancel out the fact that watching this, it was very clear how much he would just _love _to break out. To break loose, get out there in the world he'd almost destroyed. And probably finish the job, once he stopped gawking and got over the rush of finally being free.

Being locked up for years…

Misato didn't want to empathize. Maybe that just made her hate him more, even though it should have seemed like karma, how Adam suffered _something _like what she had suffered, even though it had no father to lose and clearly didn't care much about its own children.

Well, it wasn't like Adam _remembered _them, so she couldn't ascribe it to only being naturally heartless. That would be a good way to underestimate how far he'd go for Rei, and she'd seen Commander Ikari use Rei as leverage on him twice. One thing she definitely did have to admire about the man… Well, two things. His ruthlessness and his ability to manipulate. The UN could have used him as a general. Although perhaps his genius was wasted on anything besides keeping the angels in check and saving the world. He was also enough of a bastard that she could trust he certainly wasn't doing this as some kind of _treat _for the angel, giving it a day 'out' out of some misplaced guilt for keeping it prisoner its entire life, well, the life that it remembered.

Kaworu's bright joy at this, the way it translated into squeezing Rei because he simply couldn't contain it and had to share it with someone, the way he kissed the top of her head and she nuzzled at his cheek, clearly intending to calm him with that gesture, let him know that yes, she knew, and she was glad he was happy? It made her want to ask Ritsuko once again if she was _sure _they weren't lovers. A boy and a girl who shared a bed when they weren't in tubes for testing, who slept wrapped around each other so it was harder to remove one of them and leave the other to only find out later when they woke up alone?

Ritsuko just looked extremely bored, though. When Misato got this job and could finally ask questions like that, her friend explained curtly that as far as she could tell, the two of them didn't have human-style sex drives, which made sense when they were supposed to reproduce by merging and spawning or whatever, and since they were both seeds anyway their obliviousness to the idea of being sexually attracted to each other probably just meant they were the angel version of straight.

That made Misato wonder again for a moment about what the other angels would think about the sight of Adam and Lilith cuddling like that, since after all the entire point of this from their perspective was reaching the seeds in order to merge with them and make a planet full of babies, but she wasn't really interested enough to go there.

She'd thought she was attracted to men, not feminine-looking boys.

Dammit, Shinji…

Misato would have _liked _to separate them, but Commander Ikari had looked at her over his glasses the one time she even hinted at the idea, in a way that made her feel about two and wonder if she had any functioning brain cells. There certainly hadn't been any doubt about the fact that she'd better shut up instead of actually suggesting something so stupid if she wanted to keep her job.

Shinji was right: Rei did seem pretty motherly right now, patting Kaworu on the head and gently restraining his childish enthusiasm. It was hard to think of him as Adam, seeing him like this. As a several-billion-year-old being when this was just forcing it home that he'd never been _outside_ unless he was being transported from facility to facility under heavy sedation, and that happened only a handful of times. The risk was just insane. The only reason this was anything like 'safe' was because no one out there should have any idea Adam was in this truck.

That was when Misato realized that the word might leak before Gendo's promised second trip, and guess who would be responsible for security on that one?

What had she done to piss him off?

Oh, right, she'd been in command when his son got absorbed by his Eva. That would do it. It wasn't so much that Commander Ikari had soft spots for his wife and son as that even though his people skills when it came to anything other than bastardry were as outstanding in their absence as his bastardry was in its genius, _touch them and die_.

Ancient conspiracy 1. Gendo Ikari 15, and that wasn't counting the angels. And Shinji thought his father didn't love him because he'd gotten the kid out of the line of fire…

She did kind of have to agree with Ritsuko, in that his creepy factor aside, that kind of dedication was damn hot. She definitely wasn't going to join the line of people trying to get in his bed, because she liked her ego and she wasn't sure it could survive too many more of those over-the-glasses looks.


	14. Only One Left

_The new movie is out in Japan. Where are my oodles of romantic anime/Rebuild version Kaworu fics? Especially since a voice actor said, in promo material, that Rebuild Kaworu _has been through this several times_, basically confirming Rebuild as a sequel to the anime where Kaworu's the only one who remembers._

_Instead, I write fucked-up godlings fucking up in a fucked-up world. Although Rebuild-verse still has two of the three. Tsk tsk, what is wrong with me?_

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Misato froze, half-turning but keeping her body between the Fifth Child (the angel) and the laptop she'd been using to try to hack into SEELE. "What are you doing here?" she asked him, going on the offensive. This place was full of cables, part of the Magi system: was he going to attack the Magi like that other angel?

Was he finally making his move?

He frowned, lips pressed together, then decided, "I don't really care what you were doing. I'll find out anyway." He shifted his weight, and Misato put a hand on her sidearm, recognizing a ready position. "Of the people he's let into his heart, you're the only one Shinji has left. The First Child isn't the one Shinji knew, the Second Child is broken, the Fourth is dead and the others at his school have left him behind. The Third Child refuses to care about me, and I don't have any more time to try to convince him to change his mind." Kaworu seemed to be talking to himself more than to her, or was it that she was only an audience to him. Red eyes assessed her, but not just as someone he clearly intended to take down. That thoughtful frown: if this was a human, Misato would have read it as the frown of someone who knew that what they wanted to do was wrong, but they were only a hair's breadth away from doing it anyway.

They weren't monitored here: that was half of why Misato had come here to do her hacking. No witnesses.

No fool, Misato started to draw her gun.

Kaworu was _fast_. Drop to kick her legs out from under her, then tackle her down and wrench the gun out of her hand, damn near breaking her wrist: none of those moves were physically impossible. Not like the way he'd piloted Asuka's Eva despite it not being reset for him, then done a goddamn backflip off an angel. Another angel.

He hadn't taken that battle seriously, but the look in those wild red eyes as Misato looked down the barrel of her own gun? Deadly serious. "Are you an agent of the old men as well as Shinji's father? Did they already give the order to kill me? No," he said, forcibly calming himself, taking slower breaths. "I'll know soon enough. If you are an agent of the old men, if you were planning to hurt Shinji the way all the rest of you have?" He smiled. "Then you'd deserve this."

"Do it, you damn angel," she said, trying to bluff. "I'm not supposed to be here either, and if I'm not back where I'm supposed to be in four minutes?"

"But you will be," he told her, and was that a bare hint of regret under the wild desperation? "Today is the day I die, and the old men will make sure of that. No, today is the day _Kaworu Nagisa _dies." His other hand reached for her neck.

Gun or no gun, Misato still tried to roll over, grab him, _something _to get him off when she felt something crawl _under her skin. _Just like the last angel did to those Evas. What was he going to do to her?!

Her arms and legs froze, then fell limply to the cable-strewn floor.

Kaworu smiled, satisfied, and looked down into her eyes. "Kaworu Nagisa was born only to die, to be a sacrifice for those old men and their delusions of godhood. _Misato Katsuragi _can live and be with Shinji_._"

A minute he stayed there, with his hand on her neck, tendrils hooked into her brain. A minute more, and he put her gun back in her holster.

Then he slumped forward, red eyes still open. No one was looking out of them.

Misato pushed him off her disdainfully, then put a hand on her laptop. "Ah, that's what she-I was doing." Closing it, she packed it away in its case, then picked up the case and the body.

Throwing it off one of the conveyor belts, watching it fall down into the darkness: let the old men try to find it. Let them waste their efforts trying to hunt down a child that was already dead.

Misato Katsuragi went on her way.

Inside, she was screaming every curse she'd learned over her years as a soldier.

* * *

Looking into his new face in the mirror, Kaworu tapped his lips thoughtfully. This phenomenon: Misato's brain threw up the term 'chapped.' A Lilim weakness: he could heal it easily, but Misato Katsuragi wouldn't be able to. Misato Katsuragi would reach into her purse and apply chapstick, so he did, letting the body do as it had many times before. So much of what he needed was ingrained in this body's hindbrain: how she walked, how she laughed… He could also tap her memories, but until he learned more about how to act like this Lilim, better to let the body do what came naturally, move in habitual patterns.

He'd worried that he might not respond to the name Misato, but the body already knew to pick that word out of the air, would awaken when called out to. It made him wonder what habits his old body had, and it was a good thing he'd left them behind, or else they might have given him away.

A pity he may have lost most of his physical combat skill: Misato was trained, but she hadn't been drilled as relentlessly. No one had worked on a style for her that would take advantage of his angelic speed, durability and energy without being openly unnatural. He _remembered_ all of it, but there was a difference between knowing a move and having it ingrained, the way Misato's hands automatically put the cap back on and stowed the lip balm away in her purse.

He would have smiled, but Misato's body was blotting her lips.

Inwardly, he laughed, because so far this was going so well. It was easy to exchange pleasantries, the Lilim's thoughtless responses almost automated. Driving home wasn't any trouble either. Now he was back in Misato's apartment, where Shinji lived when he wasn't staying with Kaworu.

Shinji wasn't here yet, but even though Kaworu wanted to see him, that was all to the good, wasn't it? More time to learn how to, yes, it was very like piloting an Eva.

If Shinji cared for Misato Katsuragi, then Kaworu would be Misato Katsuragi for him. Obviously Misato didn't love him, not the way Rei had and Kaworu did, otherwise Shinji wouldn't have wanted to avoid her so much that he went to stay with someone he hated, but that was alright. Kaworu knew that Shinji had found him weird and started to hate him because he didn't act like a Lilim. Well, he would study this Lilim until he knew how to act like her, and then he could start to make improvements. He would be so much better than the Lilim Misato Katsuragi, and "_Shinji will love me." _

"_What are you planning to do to Shinji, you bastard?!" _the Lilim demanded. As her body left the bathroom, obeying the addiction-spawned impulse to get another beer, Kaworu faced her on the mental plane formed by this connection.

"_You'll find out soon enough. Without Dr. Akagi, the Magi are vulnerable: that was how you could hack them." _She knew that, and since he could see all her memories, he now knew it too._ "Once I manage to sabotage the equipment you use to detect the light of the soul, I'll break through the barrier of what you call an AT field. Isn't that what you Lilim all want, to become one with someone else? You will become a part of me, and I will truly be Misato Katsuragi. The one and only," _he added, the phrase rising up out of the memories he'd copied from her. "_I already have your body, access to all of your memories and everything you know: now all I need is your soul fragment, Lilim. Not that I'll give up the power I possess as a White Seed: eventually, my power and the information you have will bring down the old men, and then? There won't be any reason for Shinji to reject me, even if I reveal my power. I'll be Misato Katsuragi, after all, and he will love us." _

Ripples on the illusionary LCL beneath them, ripples washing around Misato's feet, and she could feel his manic glee. A cruel child's delight, a crush on Shinji that turned into an obsession.

"_I'll give you my memories," _he decided. "_That will make you more like me, the way I was changed by Rei's love of Shinji, so I won't be distorted too much by the merge. Once you love him like I do, you'll want him to be happy. Of course you want my power: Lilim are all selfish, power-hungry bastards_." A swirl of bitterness now. "_You could have had Shinji in your bed, all this time, willing to be touched and kissed by you, and you didn't, when I… He refused to love me, when I love him and…" _No, no, he refused to be sad, kneeling there with his arms wrapped himself like a child trying to hold back tears. "_I will live and have Shinji's love, and damn the old men, damn all of you Lilim! If Kaworu Nagisa is cursed, if I can't live and be happy, then I'll find freedom in the death of the role you planned for me! I'll be someone else who_ can_ be happy!" _

In here, his chest heaved. Out there, her body drank another beer, none of the angel's distress showing on the surface. No sign that anything was wrong. "_Armisael thought that merging would end the pain of loneliness. I refuse to give the old men the Third Impact they want, and merging with you means I won't be myself anymore. Kaworu will die, to be replaced by Kaworu-and-Misato, but if that's the only way for any of me to live and be with Shinji, then I won't hesitate!" _

"_Who are you trying to convince?" _Misato wondered.

She didn't receive an answer. Not exactly.

Instead he frowned, and pushed something at her. Memories. Someone else's memories, someone else's _feelings _in her mind the way the angel was in her body. He'd said that he would do this to change her, make her more like him before he absorbed her soul and merged with her (the way the old men wanted all Lilim to merge), and… Wait.

Misato's eyes narrowed. Danger, deadly danger to herself and Shinji. And opportunity.

How much did he know? About the old men who had to be SEELE, about the true nature of the angels, about all the mysteries Kaji had tried to uncover and now Misato was seeking in his place?

They'd trained him to use his powers, even if they'd either never anticipated that this was possible or let him know it was possible, Misato saw. Kaworu had learned this from the angel that Rei died to kill (Armisael), but maybe there was something in here that would let her fight him?

"_Not with me watching you and your thoughts, Lilim," _he warned her. "_But planning to destroy the old men will be useful to us_." Once they were one. "_They wanted me to observe Shinji, so they must have plans for him. I won't let them hurt him, and that will be harder when we're pretending to be a Lilim." _Meaning no AT field to block bullets, for example. "_You planned how to destroy those other angels, so maybe you _can _figure out how to stop those other Lilim_." Was it hope she sensed from him now? "_At least I won't be dying to merge with someone who will drag me down that much. You know so much about how Lilim act, what Shinji will consider weird…_" And now they were back to Shinji.

She could remember it now, Kaworu feeling Rei's love for Shinji. How it hadn't really sunk in until later, when Shinji chose to come back to Kaworu's room with the angel. Someone _choosing _to be in his company?

And then kissing Shinji, feeling another human's warmth, feeling concern for that human and realizing that love meant _someone wouldn't want him to die_. Someone would want him to stay, someone would want to touch, kiss and hold him.

The discovery that love was an end to loneliness, not in oblivion but in togetherness, and Kaworu wanted to live. Wanted the lonely ache inside, an angel among humans who would never get close to him, even if out of reverence instead of fear, to stop hurting.

Kaworu's love wasn't a copy of Rei's love. He'd fallen in love with Shinji on his own, in love with the hope of being loved in return. In love with that dream.

A lonely child kept in tubes except when he was taken out for training of one sort or another, the way Misato had been a lonely child locked up alone in the dark for all those years.

She hated him, he was an angel (No, he was _the white giant reborn)_ and he'd taken over her body and intended to overwrite her soul (overwrite both their souls, when it was the only way he could think of to live and _stop hurting)_.

Misato had hoped against hope that the white-haired boy's memories would reveal some weakness to her, something that she could use to throw him out of her body before he destroyed her and hurt Shinji, but this? He was made up of weaknesses, a broken child and this was his last hope. He _knew _that what he was doing to her was wrong: she honestly hadn't expected that. Not of an angel, not of someone raised by SEELE, but he knew how much he would hate this if, when it was done to him. This was far too like what they'd wanted to use him for.

He just… he needed to hide, he wanted the pain to stop, and Misato remembered all those years of wanting someone, _anyone_ to come, to listen to her, to relieve her loneliness and set her free.

It was the same people that locked both of them away, wasn't it? Her to keep her from spreading the true story of Second Impact, and him, what? To keep him from learning about humans? About the things they did to relieve the pain of loneliness?

About compassion? About sympathy?

Because that was what she felt for him now. She couldn't help it. As broken a boy as Shinji, but while she had no idea what to do to help Shinji, she could see exactly what he needed. She knew what she could do to help him. Or to break him down further.

Those red eyes were staring at her now, and she knew what he'd felt when he'd killed that kitten. Knew it better than he himself did, because she knew what those emotions were. Not like someone who _had to figure out_ that the feeling in their chest was love.

Sympathy. He was capable of it. That poor cat, that would die painfully and alone: he could end that pain. Make sure that it wouldn't die alone. All the while not knowing that he could sympathize with the cat because he himself felt those things. That he wanted someone to care, wanted to not be alone, so much that death seemed like a small thing compared to that. Seemed a small price to pay, for someone to care enough to want to end his pain.

He could see what she was thinking, but it wasn't hard for her to tell what he was thinking. Not when he was crying now, in this place.

Not when her body was crying right now, head held in her hands, and if anyone was watching, they'd think she was mourning Kaji again, crying for him, and she wanted revenge on his killers. This angel, this _boy_ could get that for her, just like Shinji had granted her vengeance upon the angels. But it wasn't the angels who were responsible for Second Impact, was it? It wasn't the angels that had killed her father and left her to rot in a dark room for years on end, was it?

It was the old men who had _raped _this boy's father, kept him locked up, kept him from ever having a friend before Shinji, if Shinji even counted. She thought he did, because Shinji didn't let just anyone as close as he already let this boy.

And that thought was what undid Kaworu. That Shinji had been lying when he rejected Kaworu, that Shinji was lying to himself and hadn't meant to hurt Kaworu enough to make the angel want to die. Made him drop to the floor of this place and curl up as she stood over him, relief/joy/love and so much old pain, sadness and loneliness.

"_Why, why did you have to… I can't kill you now, and I need to kill you in order for our souls to be one, in order for me to be the person Shinji loves, but you think he cares for _me_, and_…"

Finally she could move, if only in this place. Was his control weakening? Could she break free and regain control over her body? When she thought that and nothing happened, when Kaworu didn't act to regain control because he couldn't, that was when she knew she'd won.

It was also when winning ceased to be a matter of life and death, at least for her or the world.

She went over to him, crossed the short distance between them on this mental plane, and knelt down beside him to pry apart the ball he'd curled into, just a little, enough that red eyes could look up at her, helpless and wanting. She _could _hurt him now: it was one thing for him to do this to her when she was one more person that hurt Shinji, but now?

A chick that fell out of its nest, a small bird with clipped wings, handled by humans enough its mother would never accept it back: that was Kaworu's certainty. Not unless they merged, and that would kill him, just as it would kill all of humanity. He looked so young right now, younger than Shinji even though he was a handful of months older. Those eyes begged her for, for _something_, and all it took was gathering him to her chest, some innate knowledge making her rock him a little, and make soothing sounds.

As he clung to her. Gave himself up to her, and cried.

It brought her own memories back to her: how much she had wanted someone to do this. How much she _needed _it, until she'd tried to forget that desire so it didn't drive her mad. Wasn't it driving everyone mad? The need to be close to other people, only to be wounded by them, sometimes because they just didn't know what to do either. Misato wasn't even honest with herself about her own desires, so how was Kaji supposed to know?

They were the same in this, she and Kaworu, so surely Shinji was the same? If even an angel was, Shinji had to be. She'd wanted to hold him, but he'd pulled away from her. Afraid of being undone the way Kaworu was right now? Afraid of being made vulnerable, because if she was his source of something he needed _so much_, then when she abandoned him the way his father and mother had? It would hurt, and Shinji was so fragile.

Get past someone's armor, the barrier that protected them from others (the AT field?), and they were all equally fragile, weren't they? Even angels.

"_You're not getting your body back," _he told her sometime later. "_Not now, not when there's Shinji, and the old men will be looking for me_."

"_I expected that._" Even if Misato was sure most of the reason was that he was afraid that once she could speak to other Lilim again, she'd forget about him except as a useful tool. Right now, he had her all to himself, and she could see the fear in his eyes that she'd betray him to the old men, get them killed, die and leave him once she could tell other Lilim where he was. Hadn't Shinji left him as soon as Rei was back, even if it wasn't Shinji's Rei?

She wanted to scream at him to let her go, the old panic from being tied to that chair in that dark room trying to resurface, but she was not alone and even if she couldn't see the fear in his eyes when he clung to her like this, _she knew him_. He was so afraid, and he wasn't going to stop possessing her now, not when all the reasons he'd originally done it were still valid and it had also given him this.

Misato understood why he was doing this: after all, she'd seen his memories and knew exactly why he was doing this. She felt sorry for him, too. That didn't make it okay. That didn't mean she'd forgiven him for taking her own damn body away from her. She couldn't hate him for it, not anymore, but that didn't mean the idea of being possessed by _anyone _didn't make her skin crawl. At least he'd given up on the idea of tampering with her mind anymore, but that he'd even _considered _it?

Touching the thought of white hair, running her fingers through it because she needed to move and it was in lieu of grabbing that neck and trying to kill him again and that would hurt him so much but absolutely fail to kill him, she was fairly certain that she would get control of her body back fairly soon, as soon as the hunt died down, things were resolved and he did start trusting her not to forget about him when he needed this _so much_. Once he had other friends his own age. "_At least let me move around in here and watch everything, okay? That way, I can tell you if you're about to do something stupid. It will be just like supervising the Eva pilots." _Hadn't she been watching over Rei all this time, when Rei was another angel?

At least he had the decency to duck his head and feel guilty, since he also had her memories now, and knew what it had done to her, under the bravado, to be unable to move. Just like being tied to that chair. "_You like this, don't you?" _he asked, kissing her. "_It's part of love, something that makes Lilim feel less lonely," _and although Misato was happy in theory that he was trying to make it up to her, he was mentally practically a child and now he could see everything she'd done with Kaji?

Which made her think of another part of her routine involving her vibrator and where was she even going to _start _explaining this to him, after he'd been raised to have absolutely no respect at all for what people did to show others that they were loved, or love in general, and forget personal boundaries! Wait, that was it, "_If you come on too strong to Shinji, he'll think that I'm being weird." _

Wait, Misato realized. Was she offering seduction tips to an angel?

"_You'll be thinking about what I'm doing as I do it, and I can hear your thoughts." _And know if she was trying to lie with them, if that was even possible. Kaworu look smug now, like a cat who hadn't gotten into the cream yet, but was very much looking forward to it.

* * *

What made Kaworu delighted and her feel that she really had failed as the closest thing to a caring adult in Shinji's life was how _easy _it was. After Kaworu vanished, presumably at the hands of the Twelfth Angel, it was easy to tell Shinji that he wasn't allowed to wander off anymore, that he needed to stay with her so she could try to protect him.

Including sleeping in her bed at night.

Kaworu remembered how Shinji had fled to the strange pilot's rooms rather than deal with Misato trying to comfort him after Rei's death: it was something he needed so much it scared him. Talking about it was one thing, but when she asked Shinji to let her hold him, for her sake as well as his, because she hated to see him hurting and closing himself away like this?

That skittish look in his eyes: so like Kaworu, even though he hid it under deadness. Even though he had learned to flee what Kaworu still openly longed for.

So _easy_ to get him to sit on her lap as they looked at the information Kaji dug up: Shinji knowing the truth might help him be safer. He'd blush but he'd do it, and like it. Just like a protective kiss on the forehead, and he started gravitating towards her, closing the gap of his own volition in the perhaps-subconscious hope that she'd tug him towards her, catch him and eliminate that gap again.

The search for Kaworu as well as the Twelfth Angel continued, and when Shinji confessed, lying awake one night, that he missed Kaworu? That he was worried that Kaworu might have done something permanent after Shinji rejected him? That he regretted it?

Kaworu was almost too overcome to grasp the opportunity to draw Shinji to his stolen chest, to stroke Misato's hands down Shinji's back and say soothing things, to kiss him on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips.

And after that? How happy he was? How happy Shinji was? All the other times that followed?

She should be angrier than she was, she knew. At least she was absolutely certain that Kaworu's feelings were genuine? That he wasn't taking advantage of Shinji the way Misato would have been, if she was the one to do this with a boy in her care?

Maybe she was as okay with it as she was because it was one huge Fuck You to Gendo Ikari _and _SEELE. To all the bastards responsible for Second Impact and trying to bring about the Third. A human, the boy they tried to destroy, finding happiness in this life along with the angel they groomed to wish for death.

Not as big a fuck you as using Kaworu's ability to control networks to hijack not just the airwaves but the internet and broadcast the truth behind Second Impact, of course.

Misato was even happier about _that _one, and getting to lie there in the back of Kaworu's mind and watch him watch the world's reaction was so good she even turned down his offer to let her have control of her body back long enough to get herself a beer. Nah, not when she could watch the Security Council panic over what was going to happen to them now that the world knew they'd covered _this _up. And Kaworu would fetch her beer anyway.

"_You realize I own you now, don't you?"_ she told him, grinning. "_If I tell Shinji that I wanted to hide you, in return for helping me with this, and that I'm the one who set you two up_," that was one thing, "but…" It was her that Shinji thought he loved, so if he found out that Kaworu had possessed her, or hurt her in any way?

She saw the flash of old anger in those eyes –being owned was a loaded concept for him, especially by Lilim. That was most of why she'd used that word, because making him admit that it was true?

Seeing hurt win out over anger, because he'd let her close, because he loved her now. It wasn't that she'd let him stay here per se, but she'd talked to him, and kept him company, and held him, and been a saint under the circumstances. He hated the old men, had plenty of reason to hate the faceless mass known as Lilim – SEELE had made damn sure of it – but he'd let her close, and that meant she could hurt him despite his AT field, didn't it? The hedgehog had spines, and she could pierce him to the bone.

Making the angel, the immortal, know fear. Know that she had the power now. Making the boy with the power that had blown up half the planet once, and could do it again, desperate to placate _her_.

Making him finally relax a little, because it was okay. He wasn't going to fight, going to struggle, if it was her. Feel him relax a little in her arms, leaning against her chest. She could put two fingers on his neck, on either side of his pulse and tell him, "_When you're out, I'm going to make you wear a collar_." Not all the time, of course, but certainly at least just once, with a _leash_. Tie him up somewhere, just because she could. Because it was fair, wasn't it, after he'd bound her? She knew he would let her do it, be caught on the edge between fear and trust not because he was a goddamn angel and there wasn't much silk rope could do to hold him, but because it was her, and he didn't want to displease her.

Tie him to a chair, just as she had been tied, just as he had been caged in that tube, and _not _leave him alone to cry in the dark.

Because she was better than those damn bastards, and he knew it.

That would prove it.

And that was why he couldn't, _wouldn't _kill her. That was why and how she was going to own him, going to have the power here, even though he was the one with the power to alter her memories and emotions, possess her and fuck with her head. He knew that if he changed her then she wouldn't be the one he loved anymore, just like merging with Lilith would be the end of Kaworu_._

"_I owe you everything,_" he told her, and she knew he knew that yes, this meant she owned him. With all his power, all he could say was, "_Please_." Please be kind.

Five minutes later Hyuga called to tell her to turn on her TV, and she and Shinji were racing from their quarters to the Eva cages and the bridge. "Now_ you're giving me control_," she told Kaworu. "_I'm the one who knows how to kill angels_." This was her damn job, and SEELE wasn't going to go down without trying to bring about Third Impact.

It was almost a surprise how little of a relief it was to be back in control, to breathe in real air, but then she'd guessed that Kaworu was trying to make that little mental plane of his more realistic, for her sake. So she didn't feel caged. Not when he knew how that felt, knew it intimately from both their memories. She'd been worried that she'd be overcome with emotion, she way she was when she finally realized that she was out of that room and they weren't going to send her back. Shaking, crying, kissing the ground: there were cameras here, so she couldn't afford that.

Maybe it was a sign that she did trust Kaworu, too, that she really could believe that this was really happening. That she was free, well, relatively free. He could still retake control, but he wouldn't, not unless she did something stupid like try to shoot herself in order to kill the angel.

She wasn't going to do that, not when they had so many Evas incoming and they might need the angel. No, they _would_ need the angel. One Eva against a horde of them, all of them with S2 engines? Shinji was going to need Kaworu's help, so she needed to figure out how she was going to manage to explain that.

When she reached the bridge, she found that with Gendo and Fuyutsuki gone, she was the one in command. Hyuga informed her that they were about to be swarmed by the JSDF since so far Section 2 had been unable to find and capture Gendo Ikari, that was something else to worry about. At least she had a good working relationship with them, so hopefully their search wouldn't get in the way of her doing NERV's damn job.

When she finally turned off the video conference with the leader of the JSDF forces, after patching him through to Ritsuko so they could coordinate their search of NERV's labyrinth? That was when it hit her.

Kaworu'd talked about how she would have his power, but that was the combined version. Now, though? If he was hiding in her, that meant she had access to an S2 engine, right? And an AT field, his.

She could fight. Instead of sending children to fight for her, risking their lives to get _her _vengeance, _she _ could go out there and help Shinji. Could shatter the dreams of those old bastards who killed her father.

Wait, she told herself. Would that even work? She might have access to an angel's power, but she wasn't a giant robot. Hadn't SEELE run simulations pitting Kaworu against multiple Evas? She should have access to those memories, and…

And it _would _work. The power of this AT field, the strongest on the planet: she could fly out there and punch their fucking lizard faces in. "_I could _kiss _you," _she thought at Kaworu, aware that she was grinning stupidly and not giving a damn. "_This would work, right? You could use my body's memories of how to move, so I could use your knowledge of how to fight like an angel?" _

"_I think so?" _Unless her Lilim nature somehow screwed it up. "_I was able to use Armisael's and Iruel's abilities without any trouble." _To infiltrate Misato's body and the world's computer systems.

"_If I can't for some reason, then you take over," _she told him. "_But I want to do this." _The excitement in her chest, all that buried hatred and anger coming to the surface and burning clean, because she could finally _do something_? "_If this works," _Misato said, grinning like a maniac as she did what borrowed memory said would flare her soul, but not enough to set off the detectors, and felt something happen, "_then I will forgive you for possessing me. Absolutely_." She was already pretty close, after telling Maya to put the screens on news coverage of the investigations and hunt for SEELE while they waited for SEELE's Evas to arrive, under fire from jets and surface-to-air missiles all the way. This, this was trumph, watching all their lies exposed, all their plans fall to ruin. All but this last one and if she could smash it, smash their last hopes with her bare hands?

"_Give me this,_" she told him. "_Give me this. Let me get out there and fight beside him, instead of having to sit back here while he fights _my _battle and nearly gets himself killed, and I will love you forever."_

* * *

Focus the light like _this_, and "I can fly?!" Misato was so delighted she almost lost her focus and fell to the bottom of the Eva cage. "Right, I knew _you _could do that," from those simulations, but, "I can _fly?" _

"_Yes_." She felt Kaworu's smile even if she couldn't see it, since she was fully in her body instead of half on that mental plane. Yes; he liked flying too.

"Is this why we have dreams of flying? Because somewhere in our genes, it says that we can do this?" she wondered, thinking of Pen-Pen. "This is like the difference between thinking about moving my arm and actually moving my arm: It's like my body knows how to do this. This is my body, right? Not something I'm borrowing from you?"

It was a shrug she felt this time, and she saw an pale, see-through image of Kaworu appear in front of her, impatiently looking up at the shaft the Evas launched through. "How are you doing that? Will anyone else see you?"

"This is just a projection, but it's not just in your head." He wanted Shinji to see him. "Although I can pick things up like this." Using the barrier of the light of his soul to mimic solidity. "I couldn't practice before, not without setting off your detectors. I was going to let you use this form to talk to Shinji," he told her. "If something came up. I suppose I'll be using it for now." One limit on his AT field was his reaction speed: he couldn't do something unless it occurred to him to do it. With both himself and Misato using his field, both of them would be able to think up and apply strategies.

"What's the range on that?" she wondered.

"This isn't like being in two bodies: only Leliel did anything like this, and it would take too much of my focus to make this anything like Leliel's shadow," he told her. As he turned to face her, she saw that even his red eyes were grey in that form: there wasn't any color to it besides the natural color of his AT field, while Leliel's shadow had two colors and had actually looked solid enough to fool them all instead of like a ghost. "So I don't know. I won't risk going that far, and I can't see with these eyes since they're just illusions. I only have your body's senses and my angelic ones."

Realistically, that limited him to staying in front of her. Otherwise he'd be operating blind. "So you can't see if the path to the surface is clear?"

"No." He glanced down at the disk of light beneath her feet impatiently. Would she get over here and let him see if he needed to fight with the Magi in order to open their route? Better yet, would she get out there and help Shinji?

If he weren't see-through, it would have been impossible to see any difference between him and any other impatient teenager. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she told him. "Wouldn't miss this for the world."

Blue sky a ways above them: so Ritsuko hadn't shut the bulkheads when Kaworu appeared. Good. "So, I can push myself up," she said to Kaworu, who was hovering several meters above her, but really to herself, "_Or_…"

Kaworu's image blinked out of existence when she fell past it, mentally pushing at the walls of the launch tunnel just slightly in order to keep herself in the middle. "Whoo!" she yelled, or was it laughed? This kind of power: this was so much better than being an Eva pilot!

"What are you doing?" Kaworu asked her, blinking into sight in front of her only to have to adjust his position again and again. "You're getting faster!"

"Accelerating!" Misato screamed, wondering how fast she was going. "I'm falling up!" So this wasn't something Kaworu knew about? From how confused Kaworu looked, she didn't need to search his memories to find that they'd taught him music (what angel couldn't sing God's praises?) and combat, but he'd never heard '9.8 meters per second per second' in his life.

What he could figure out was that, "You won't be holding still up there either, so this won't work." His form disappeared for the last time, but she still felt him looking over her shoulder. She could tell he was pouting: he'd wanted to appear to help (preferably save) Shinji and have Shinji know it, but if it wouldn't work, it wouldn't work. At least he could still use his power.

Misato only turned on her communicator when she was out of NERV and halfway to the battlefield, because better to ask forgiveness than permission, and, she thought as her eyes widened, even better to ask, "What the hell are those?!"

Kaworu didn't need to ask what exactly she was referring to: she was sensing them through him, after all. "_They feel like the Lance: warn Shinji that the Eva's power won't block them_!"

"Shinji!"

"Misato, what…" She could hear his voice: it looked like someone had already told him that they were detecting the Twelfth Angel's AT field from her.

"Kaworu's helping me. But be careful! The weapons they're holding: they're something like the lance Rei used to kill that angel! Kaworu thinks your AT field shouldn't protect you from them, so I don't know why it's worked so far… Ritsuko," Misato said as five of the white Evas simulataneously did something to the weapons they were using that made them look much more like proper lances. "I thought you said you were sure the Magi and our communications were secure?"

"That was until you started broadcasting in the clear: those things are _internal _communicators for a reason, Misato." NERV had signal dampeners and the protection of its bulk: Naoko Akagi had designed their internal repeaters to keep _angels _from listening in, but Misato wasn't inside their protection anymore, now was she.

"Well, at least they don't have the advantage of surprise anymore." At least Misato now knew _not _to say aloud that according to Kaworu, the four Evas Shinji had already taken down were _not _out. With any luck, she could destroy them before they started moving again: they were sitting ducks while they were playing possum, but they'd stop playing possum as soon as they knew it wasn't moving…

And it looked like there was someone smart in control of those things, because they'd just started moving. "Try to get the lances away from them!" Misato said, for both Shinji and Kaworu's benefit. She was smaller, so it would be easier for her to avoid getting hit with those things, and if she could make herself enough of a problem that they'd focus on her instead of the easier target…

Well, she thought, as two of them actually threw their lances at her, that was easy. "_Why are they aiming for me instead of Shinji?" _when he was the bigger target.

"_You said I was helping you! The old men were trying to kill me once they realized I wasn't obeying their commands, remember?" _The prongs of the lances weren't affected by his AT field, but Kaworu could hit the shafts, making them miss and then pressing against them so that he was holding them. Even as he answered her, he was throwing one of the lances back at the Eva that had thrown it.

Since the Eva was still struggling, trying to pull the lance out of its stomach Kaworu hadn't scored a direct hit, not when destroying the core destroyed the angel, but Kaworu's field was still stronger than the Eva, strong enough to use the lance to pull it up into midair and stab it repeatedly with the other lance. "_That's where it is_."

"Shinji, treat them like angels and aim for the cores!" Misato ordered him. "Kaworu, give him one of those lances." They were _that _much better than the prog knife or even the chainsaw, and no one had given this technology to NERV? Of course not, not when they were planning to overrun NERV themselves. "If you're going to give him both," she said when both of them dropped themselves into Shinji's hands, "then get me one!"

Her forgiveness was _entirely contingent _on her getting to destroy at least one of these damn Evas! Preferably the last.

"_Hold still_," Kaworu asked her, going so far as to take control of her eyes from her for a couple seconds, long enough to find a likely lance and send his light pulsing out to slam the Eva carrying it into a building a few times until the lance slipped from its fingers. "_I could grab those two so easily since they weren't holding them: since their AT fields are on the surface of their bodies now, they're holding the lances with them as well as with their hands. I have to do all of this relative to where my core is hidden inside you, so it's harder if you keep moving around when I'm not in control." _ Grabbing and aiming both required precision, as opposed to hitting Evas with massive walls of hard light. "_Can you hold this?" _he asked her, lifting it up in front of her and then dropping it.

It felt like reaching out with her hands, just that natural. She _knew _that wasn't how the Evas felt to the pilots, but knowing the true nature of the Evas, was it really all that strange that they felt warped? "So, don't let any of them grab my lance, or I'll have to let you get it back for me. Got it." Pressing against something on multiple sides was how you held something with opposable thumbs: that was intuitive enough, but a wrestling match with another AT field?

The lance wasn't a gun, but using a weapon, now: even if it wasn't one she could hold in her own hands, that brought a smile to her lips. This was _her _lance now, and that made it much better than just using someone else's soul. "So, who do I stab first?" she wondered as Shinji charged towards the Eva nearest him, using one of the lances to pin the Eva down and then spearing it with the other one. "Oh? Where do you think you're doing?" Kaworu had taken her lance from the Eva nearest Shinji for obvious reasons: that was the one that had just exploded into red mist under Shinji's Eva, but the other two without weapons were crouching down.

The wings sprouting from their backs answered her question. Trying to retreat, or just intending to pounce on Shinji and weigh him down so their still-armed brethren could stab him?

Not on her watch. Not when crouching down in order to take off made them easy targets. She got a clean hit on one, but the second pulled in its wings again and rolled to the side while she was pulling back the lance and reorienting it for a second strike. She knew that Evas were more agile than any robot should be, than anything that massive should be, but that still made her frown. It wasn't as obviously unnatural as that goddamn backflip off of one of Armisael's tentacles Kaworu did while he was fucking around and not really bothering to pretend to give a damn about fighting the other angel. If he'd fought seriously, she was sure that Rei wouldn't have died, and as for the one that got Asuka, when Kaworu could fly?

Still, if these Evas could move that fast, then what other improbable things could they be capable of? Maybe hitting a very small (relatively) flying target with a lance?

"Better watch my back." She realized after she said it that she could ask Kaworu to watch for her, but this? This was her fight. And Shinji's, but she wasn't just sending him out there and telling him what to do anymore.

So far, each of them had killed one: six to go.

Since they were still using the same brain, she felt a shot of adrenaline that had to be Kaworu's shock when she reduced her altitude by just letting herself fall straight down, using her AT field to decelerate by pushing against the ground before she hit it.

She knew that humans had trouble looking up: she'd taken advantage of it herself, back in the day when she was fighting. As long as she kept any of them from getting airborne, that was to her advantage.

Without really realizing it, she'd moved to cover Shinji. Finding herself hovering over her Eva's head made her laugh, although she still kept turning, lance at the ready.

"Misato?" Shinji asked.

"It's nothing, Shinji. I'm just happy that I can protect you now." She could just picture his blush when he said that. "That one!" The Eva she pointed to was a little closer than the others, and better to go on the offensive than give whoever was controlling these Evas time to come up with a plan.

As she'd expected, when Shinji committed to an attack was when two more of the things that had been circling him went for his back. Their lances might penetrate the wall of force she threw up to protect Shinji, but their bodies went crashing back into the ground quite nicely. One of them managed to hold on to his lance, but that left her two to work with and only five more in enemy hands. Shinji managed to finish off his target, but he could only carry so many lances and Misato didn't think she could juggle more than two herself. Shinji was standing over the fallen lance, but if he went on the offensive and moved to attack another Eva, there was a risk one of the two Evas without lances would recover it…

"Misato! They've found Gendo Ikari, he's using an AT field to defend himself!" Ritsuko said angrily.

"Did he absorb Rei?" Misato asked her. "I'm borrowing Kaworu's power, and she should be the only other angel left."

"One of the JSDF squads survived long enough to confirm that Gendo has Adam's flesh: if he had Rei, we'd be dead already. I found Rei in _that _room and put her into Asuka's entry plug with her before he got there."

"So they're both at the bottom of the lake," where they'd put Unit 02 to keep it out of the way. If the Evas were necessary to Third Impact, then Misato liked the idea of having tons of _something _between them and the rest of the world. There was Terminal Dogma, but Lilith was already down there. They needed Shinji's Eva to fight, but right now, according to Kaworu, they were safer with Asuka inside Unit 02. He wouldn't have been able to pilot it if the soul in there was awake, but with Asuka in there, they at least had a chance that her mother would wake up in order to protect her, and that would make it harder for Gendo or anyone else to merge with Unit 02 and use it to set off Second Impact.

Of course, when Gendo already had Adam's flesh, then he wouldn't have any reason to go looking for Unit 02. Not unless he found out Rei was there, anyway.

"Be careful," Misato told Ritsuko, keeping an eye on one of the Evas that was circling a little closely for her taste. "These powers are pretty intuitive. I've come up with a few things I could do with them that surprised Kaworu, and Commander Ikari knows a lot more about angels and what they're really capable of than I do, I'm sure." Her lips pressed together, her condemnation of him strong enough that she wouldn't let herself say anything else, because then she'd start cursing his name. "Let me know if he heads for… his target, and see what you can do to hide her location. I know SEELE are trying to hack the Magi, but they might not be the only ones."

"…That would explain why I can't throw this hack out of Caspar," Ritsuko said, and Misato winced. She could hear how this _burned _her old friend.

"You should try to lure him out of the Geofront," Misato told her. "If he stays in a confined space, it would be hard for the Eva to get to him," if only his father was a man Shinji could hesitate to attack, "and I'm using Kaworu's soul. They need either his soul or Rei's to set off Third Impact." Adam's or Lilith's.

She hated the idea of ordering Shinji to kill his own father, but they both hated that man. Even if he had Adam's flesh, his soul should still be weak, right? So Shinji in Unit 01 should be able to beat him without her backup.

Looking around her, she told Shinji, "Let's take care of the rest of them, Shinji!" Even though the lances were still dangerous, she didn't sense any fighting spirit at all from these Evas. They'd intended to fight nine on one: finding out that the last angel was still alive and losing some of their number must have taken them aback. Was the scenario already altered enough that they couldn't have their version of Third Impact? She wasn't going to count on it, but that would explain why they weren't desperately attacking, trying to preserve their last hope.

"Right, Misato!" he said, and she could hear that he'd never been happier to obey her orders. To have the person he loved fighting beside him? Even if Kaworu had withdrawn for now, Shinji couldn't have realized the truth yet.

Seeing Shinji's happiness: she couldn't ruin it for him.

If she said, "I'm going to leave you two alone," then even if she made it clear that Kaworu was the one who loved Shinji, that he'd been with all that time, then wouldn't Shinji still feel that she was abandoning him? After all, she'd be saying that it was Kaworu that loved Shinji, not her. Saying that she didn't love Shinji.

She'd promised herself that she wasn't going to be a cougar when she took Shinji into her apartment, but between Shinji and Kaworu, who was still fragile himself and really did need to be supervised for the good of the world… She might just be stuck with them.

Misato knew that she should feel bad about this, but no, really, she was looking forward to actually getting to participate.

* * *

_Yes, I know you'd like Shinji coming to accept Kaworu and hot threesomes with bondage and such. Maybe I'll write it eventually, but I want to get this done so I can try to finish the _Ar Tonelico_ fic for NaNO._

_Re-read several manga volumes, still have the nagging feelings I'm doing Misato's entire approach to this situation wrong. As in making her too rational about it. _

Eva characters _being rational? Exactly. _

_Eventually decided to handwave it with additional memories providing enough information to override prejudice (lit. prior judgment) and the fact they're kind of sharing neurochemicals. Doing a brain scan on Misato during all this would probably have shown some very weird brainwave activity, but unlike the pilots they probably aren't checking her out regularly. _

_Humans can catch a ball, which requires some _very _advanced multivariable calculus and physics, even if our conscious minds have no idea how to do any of that. Actually, our brains might not be able to do calculus, since finding the limit is the hallmark of calculus. This means that the calculations they're doing would actually be _more _complex and cumbersome than multivariable calculus, which exists as a set of calculation tools to make things simpler._

_Since Kaworu not knowing things that other people consider basic, like the bathroom signs, will never cease to be funny, I figured having what he pulled out of his hat (he originally was working on it for Misato's sake, though) in order to have a chance to have Shinji see him be badass in a helpful way ruined by not understanding how spatial mechanics would complicate it by a few orders of magnitude was par for the course. _

_He actually sat out that battle not because he was sulking… Well, alright, he was kind of sulking, but the main thing was that since Shinji would attribute anything Kaworu did to Misato being badass, he might as well let Misato have all the fun since he wouldn't get any credit anyway and this way Misato would be happier with him, and he needed her to put in a good word with Shinji. _

_It's fun to tinker with Kaworu's knowledge base in each of these iterations, since if you're talking a being that is canonically pretty godlike, a lot of the limits are what they do and do not know about what they can do. Since I made a lot of his abilities intuitive here for Misato's sake, I decided that he was running mostly on intuition when it came to them, and thus having a lot less knowledge about the world than Misato would hinder his ability to come up with ways to make physics work for him. Although Misato wasn't really 'reversing gravity,' she was just causing herself to accelerate _as if _she was falling upwards since that was the concept she had. _


	15. Neon Genesis

_I facepalm when I see people call children innocent and say this is a good thing._

_Innocence is a very, very bad thing. It is a deadly condition that needs to be cured._

_Ignorance of good and evil just means that you can do evil without realizing it is wrong, and it means you are less able to prevent evil from happening to you._

_An innocent person is functionally no different from a sociopath. If they don't know that certain things are wrong? If they don't know that they need to be mindful of others? _

_Children are not 'innocent' of prejudice, for example. We are hardwired to sort the world into groups, and the group we're in is better than all others. Prejudice is the default. It is something we need to work to overcome, for example by teaching children that 'us' should be more than twenty-thirty people. _

_An innocent being with godlike power is something that should be regarded as incredibly bad news. Read the Old Testament sometimes. _

* * *

"_-In other news, the new fungus that has recently caused a string of crop failures across Japan, China and Central Asia has spread to Europe. The UN Agricultural Committee reports that efforts to sequence the new fungus' DNA and alter the standard crops are underway, and summer this year is projected to last long enough for a second harvest in the afflicted areas. This is the third major crop die-off thanks to the rapid spread of a single organism in the past five years: while similar blights were not unknown in the years before Second Impact, the increase in global temperature coupled with-" _

"Kaworu, can I change the channel?" Shinji asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor in Kaworu's room. He'd come here as a refuge from the reality of Rei's death, but with the news on? Any minute now there'd be a report on the latest Eva battle. Speculation or worse, confirmation, that the pilot of Unit 00 was dead.

He could hear the reporters taking about how wrong it was that Rei died so young, and he cringed.

Kaworu kicked idly in the air, sprawled out on his bed reading a magazine. "If you want," he decided.

"Thanks." Shinji hurriedly reached for the remote. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up, and he turned to see that Kaworu was watching him. "What?"

"You don't watch the news."

"No." Shinji tried to think of the last time he had. "Hardly ever." Ever since he started piloting, he hadn't wanted to hear a catalogue of his failures, what a disappointment he was as a pilot to everyone.

Kaworu hadn't really phrased it as a question, but the confirmation made him smile.

The soap opera Shinji selected for the sake of having something mindless, something that would help him not think of Rei didn't manage to distract him from how creepy Kaworu was, but even the awareness that someone was watching him out of the corners of their eyes was a distraction.

The scrolling ribbon of a public advisory appeared at the bottom of the screen: something about pollen, an air quality warning in effect for Tokyo-2 and Tokyo-3, along with a reminder about the annual beach closings – it was the season for dangerous microorganisms in the water. Since Shinji was staying inside NERV with Kaworu instead of going home to Misato's apartment, he was just glad it wasn't about the battle. Even though that was just silly. The battle was over, the danger was over, Rei was already dead, and he'd hear about the next angel from the people who wanted him to pilot, not the tightly-controlled media.

"Pollen," Kaworu said thoughtfully. "What's that?"

"It's something flowers make," Shinji told him, a little surprised that Kaworu's Japanese wasn't perfect. "In order to reproduce, I guess? Some people are allergic to it, and it makes them sick."

"I thought so," was Kaworu's answer.

"What are you smiling about?" Shinji wondered, because the way that smile had just deepened was, well, creepier than Kaworu's usual.

"It's a good thing that you decided to stay here even though you hate me, isn't it?"

Shinji said, "I guess," because he _had _just been thinking that.

* * *

When Shinji woke up in the middle of the night, Kaworu was sitting on the bed with a hand on Shinji's shoulder almost proprietarily, the TV's volume turned down low. Was it the flickering light that woke him, or the unfamiliar human contact?

_"Even though the origin point of the 'White Tide' has been traced back to the greater Tokyo area, thanks to satellite footage, the government has asked us to remind you that there is no evidence the new species is of angelic origin, and it is composed of normal matter so it is not, I repeat, not, the true form of the latest angel. Anyone who may have been exposed to the White Tide is still urged to report to their local hospital, and all beaches on both sides of the Sea of Japan will remain closed for the duration."_

Kaworu sighed. "That's a shame."

Had he wanted to go swimming, Shinji wondered muzzily. Had he heard someone on the TV say 'angel?' "Nnn," he said, shifting pointedly under Kaworu's hand.

"Oh?" Kaworu wondered, looking down at him. "You aren't sick, are you? No, you're not," he said quietly to himself, and Shinji crankily wondered what made him so sure.

"Stop touching me and turn it off," Shinji forced out around a yawn, wishing Kaworu could figure out that was obviously what woke Shinji up and done the considerate thing and not made Shinji wake up enough to say that.

If he'd been thinking more than "Finally!" he would have been surprised that Kaworu obeyed, after looking down at Shinji for a moment, clearly thinking weird Kaworu thoughts. Shinji was just too sleepy to give a damn, even when Kaworu slid back down under the covers and it was either let the gap between their bodies let all the warmth escape or press back against him. See how Kaworu liked having someone in his personal space when he was trying to sleep, Shinji decided with the logic of those drunk or barely awake.

* * *

The second time he was woken up that night, Kaworu had to poke him and say, "Shinji," several times before Shinji was willing to take his cell phone instead of pulling a pillow over his head and waiting for it to go to voicemail. Wait, "Rei's alive?"

* * *

"We're not sure it's the Twelfth Angel, but I want all of you to stay inside NERV, alright?" Misato told her three – well, still her two pilots. Rei didn't have an Eva, and how was it even possible that this was the same Rei? "They're sending men out with hazmat gear, gas masks and flamethrowers, but burning it will put more of that toxin into the air until they're done."

"They're burning them?" Kaworu asked.

"The black plants? Yes," she told him. "They're absorbing so much of the sunlight that they're growing abnormally fast, like nothing on earth. According to Ritsuko they're not made of particle-wave matter, but something so poisonous… it has to be an angel." What human would bioengineer something like this?

* * *

_"The death toll in the Japanese islands is increasing, and everyone is advised to stay inside as much as possible. In addition to gas masks, the UN has made a webpage with instructions on how to treat layers of clothing for those who need to go outside for short periods of time."_

"Why are you watching that?" Shinji asked Kaworu, annoyed. "Didn't you hear enough about the angels during that sync test?" Nothing to do but listen to Ritsuko and Misato talking about how frustrated Misato was that there wasn't anything they could do this time. So far, the angel hadn't shown its face: this was worse than the one that got Asuka, how it stayed all the way up there so they couldn't do anything while it hurt Asuka, not until Rei got the lance, whatever that was.

Kaworu looked almost delighted as he turned to Shinji. "Aren't you worried at all?"

Shinji just blinked at him. "…Not really."

The weird boy frowned. "Why not?"

"Well, it's not like I can do anything about it, is there? Not until they find the angel, anyway." So he was useless now.

Kaworu blinked, and Shinji could practically see the light bulb go on over bright red eyes. "You don't care if you die, do you? Is that why you were willing to sleep with someone you hated?"

"Sl-sleep with…" Shinji sputtered. "It's not funny, Kaworu! We didn't _sleep together_, we just…" _Slept _slept, but did he want to explain the difference to Kaworu?

It was a huge relief to hear a knock on Kaworu's door. "Coming!" he said as he pushed Kaworu's arm away and got up, wincing at the pun. Thank goodness Kaworu didn't seem to have noticed it. "Misato?" Had she come to make him share her quarters?

Misato looked right past Shinji and said, "The Committee wants to talk to you, Fifth Child."

Kaworu smiled to himself. "I couldn't go make my reports when we're not allowed to leave NERV, could I?"

When he said that, Misato just looked more suspicious and, and was she angry? "Commander Ikari told me to take you to a room inside the facility, after we got the call from the Committee."

He looked a little disappointed, but shrugged it off. "Do you want to come?" he asked Shinji.

"Why?" Shinji wondered. Having some time with Kaworu gone sounded good, even if most of the time over these past few days he'd found he wanted the company. Just for the sake of the distraction.

"It is just the old men," Kaworu agreed, making a face at the thought of them like he'd tasted something icky. "I wouldn't want to talk to them either, but you've come to me for company, haven't you?"

"I guess," Shinji said, getting up. He didn't want to be kicked out, so he guessed he'd go.

"You want Shinji there when you make your report?" Misato asked. "Why?" So he'd have a witness? So the Committee couldn't discuss certain things, secret things, things they didn't want NERV to know?

"Loneliness," Kaworu said, looking unusually thoughtful. "The old men think it's the curse of the Lilim, but even that angel felt it. Well," he said, cheerful again, "It's too late now."

Shinji was the one to ask "Huh?"

"I don't want to talk to the old men. I came to NERV to get away from them. They're just going to yell at me for letting Commander Ikari throw away the lance and not giving them what they want, but it doesn't matter anymore." He stretched. "I suppose it won't be too bad to talk to them this time. Take us there," he told Misato. Frowning, he wondered, "Why are you glaring at me like that? Are you an agent of the old men?"

"As a member of NERV, we are overseen by the UN Committee for Human Instrumentality," she reminded him. "But that's not what you're talking about, is it? No, then."

Finally picking up the tension in the air between them, or Misato's half of it anyway (Kaworu just looked bored now), Shinji glanced back and forth between them, wondering what was going on, before deciding that he didn't care and there wasn't anything he could do anyway. "Let's go, then," he said, because the sooner this was over, the sooner he could get back to, well… Nothing really. Not thinking.

About Rei's death, the new Rei or how useless he was against the threat from this new angel. How more people were dying, right now, because he was so useless.

"There you are," Ritsuko said when they left Kaworu's room. "Come with me."

"Of course, Ritsuko," Misato said, a little surprised by the strange smile on Ritsuko's lips. "Right after."

Shinji and Misato froze: Kaworu just tilted his head curiously.

"Now," Ritsuko said, leveling the gun at them. "And drop your gun, Misato, or I'll shoot…" the tip of her gun shifted towards Shinji, but no. "I'll shoot myself."

* * *

"This is…" Shinji stared at the clones floating all around them, bile rising in his throat.

"This is disgusting!" Kaworu said, punching the glass. "So that's why she said she was the third… If Ikari can do this, to trap Lilith's soul, then… Damn them. Damn them all!" His shoulders hunched in, as he leaned his forehead against the glass, braced on it with his forearms. "Either way they would have had their instrumentality, their godhood: even death wouldn't have let me escape from them! To go from herself, who loved Shinji, to an empty mind without any memories, tamely obeying the Lilim that did this to her…" He fell to his knees, sliding down the glass, shoulders hunched in and crying without a care for the three people and near-dozen soulless clones watching him.

"Kaworu… You too? They used you for a dummy plug system too?" Shinji asked. Was that why Kaworu was so like Rei?

He cringed, shoulders pulling in as he braced himself in anticipation of a blow, or in memory of a blow, before he nodded. "Yes, for the Eva Series. So the old men wanted to control me, control the Evas made from Adam's flesh using me, even if I died to escape my fate: it wouldn't have been an end, no _escape_…" He wrapped his arms around himself almost violently, gripping himself so tightly, fingers practically digging into his back. Light tinted red by the tank's LCL cast bloody shadows on his back, as thought he was tearing into himself, trying to destroy whatever bound him to these things and this disgusting fate. He _sobbed _now, and Shinji took a step back out of shock, because for the aloof Kaworu who wasn't bothered by what happened to Asuka or watching Rei die to collapse like this, to lose all his dignity and sound like a broken child?

Watching him, all of them had forgotten about Ritsuko, her gun and that remote control. "…Kaworu," Shinji said, feeling utterly pathetic because what could he do, for Kaworu or for Rei? Was that why she was so cold now, was she going crazy inside from this, from her life not mattering to Gendo at all, the way Kaworu was?

Shinji cried out when he found himself slammed back against the tube in the center of the room. Hot, desperate lips pressed against his, Kaworu slipping his tongue inside Shinji's mouth when he cried out, pressing against his body so hard, so desperate to be close. Shinji clawed against the tube, trying to dig into it and get away, instead of into Kaworu's back, trying to get him to let go. Or press closer?

The _sounds _Kaworu was making, whimpers full of so much pain and pleading for Shinji to make it better somehow: it was just cruel of him, when Shinji couldn't do anything to make anything better for anyone. Kaworu was so close like this and moving, demanding Shinji's attention, making it impossible to ignore his body or the wetness of Kaworu's tears on Shinji's cheeks.

All Shinji could do was mentally flail as Kaworu touched him and kept touching him, reaching around Shinji and running his nails down Shinji's back in a way that just forced Shinji to press up against him, forced Shinji to realize that oh god, he had _reacted _and Kaworu's noises sounded like _begging_ and this really shouldn't be the most turned on he had ever been in his entire life.

Misato swallowed, too taken aback by the sight to even use the opportunity to get that gun away from Ritsuko.

What was this about _Lilith's _soul?

The cooking, the cleaning: she'd thought to herself several times that Shinji was going to make someone a very good wife someday, but she hadn't actually meant it like this. So this was why Shinji was spending all his time in the new pilot's room, huh?

When Shinji finally found the strength to grab Kaworu's sides and demand Kaworu "Get off me!" the panicked glance in Misato and Ritsuko's directions wasn't read as a cry for help, for them to save them from the weird person, but rather that he was upset at being kissed in front of other people. That they now knew about his secret lover.

It made Ritsuko frown: even if Kaworu definitely was an angel, he seemed genuinely upset and Shinji was treating him like this because he was more worried about appearances than about his lover's feelings?

Just another like Gendo.

She hit the button to destroy the Rei clones almost absently, glaring knives at Shinji, who froze in the act of trying to push Kaworu away again to stare. "What's happening to them?!"

Kaworu detached his mouth from Shinji's neck to whirl and look at her with a wild grin. "Did you do this?"

"Mmmph!" Ritsuko protested when she found the angel boy kissing her next.

"Freeing her, even if it's too late for the Rei that had feelings for Shinji: You get to live!" Kaworu declared, pulling back to smile at her before wrapping his arms around her again for another kiss. The honest enthusiasm was so different from Gendo's commanding calculation that Ritsuko stood there almost numbly, caught off-guard by the assault of raw affection. And her inner scientist noting the part about how _she _got to live.

She'd known Kaworu was an angel sent to them by SEELE, the angel last born from Adam, but if he was intending to kill _almost _everyone instead of merging with Adam or Lilith? Was he the angel responsible for the White Tide and Black Bloom? For the half-dozen other, _related _new species that were being identified as part of the same phenomenon, some of which had been released into the environment _years _ago?

Ritsuko was too stunned to say anything when Kaworu pulled back to look up at her with happy, exuberant red eyes before turning to pounce on and kiss Misato, probably on general principles, or because he was happy and she was there. All she could do was hope Misato let him, hope that she got added to the list of people who were allowed to live, because even though the UN had clamped down hard on the media Ritsuko knew enough about science, about the true nature of angels, to know that the process that was already beginning couldn't be stopped by the UN's efforts any more than angels could be stopped with conventional arms. If the plants and other organisms were part of the angel's body, or if they were powered by his core then killing him would destroy or at least weaken them along with him, but they weren't.

When the Black Seed arrived, had the life it created overrun this planet, with Adam sealed in sleep and unable to generate new life that would fight back? Colonizing new planets: wasn't that what Lilith and Adam had been designed for? If this boy contained Adam's soul the way Rei did Lilith's, if he was reclaiming the planet that the prophecies said should have been his from the beginning?

She almost let out a sigh of relief when Misato let him kiss her. Then Kaworu paused, and Ritsuko lowered her gaze to where Misato's gun was pressed into the flesh of Kaworu's side.

Misato nudged him again, hard. "_She _gets to live?" Ritsuko should have known that Misato would notice the same thing she did.

"Haven't you figured out what the old men sent me here to do?" the angel asked the colonel, still happy enough there wasn't any trace of annoyance at being threatened with an ordinary gun.

Ritsuko opened her mouth to warn Misato that this was an angel, but she shut it again. The angel was in a good mood, for now, and realizing that Misato didn't know, or thinking she was brave enough to try this anyway, might impress him? Maybe?

The doctor might want to die, but Misato was her best friend.

"What _did _they send you here to do?" Misato asked him, the soldier's eyes hard because she _would _shoot, even with Shinji here.

Kaworu paused. "You were supposed to take me to the old men, weren't you? You can hear it for yourself."

Misato hesitated, in case this was a trick or a trap, then looked at Ritsuko, who hid a shudder at the thought of Gendo sending her to report to them in Rei's place, how she'd been forced to strip naked. "They only sent me back because I wanted revenge on Gendo and that would benefit them," she told Misato. "I'm not going with you." Leaning against the glass separating them from what was left of those things, she crossed her arms. "I'm staying here. I want to see his face."

"Give me the gun," Misato told her.

"No. Don't worry, Misato, I'm not going to shoot myself. I'm keeping the gun because I may need it." Gendo would be that furious.

Her friend gave Ritsuko a long, hard look that made it very clear that Ritsuko was _not _allowed to die, because she owed Misato a fucking explanation for all this. Ritsuko had known about… whatever this was besides the dummy system all this time, and kept the information from Misato?

Yes, and Misato hadn't noticed that Gendo was using Ritsuko, or that she'd been sent off to be interrogated naked by perverts, so Ritsuko found that she really had zero fucks to give about Misato's moral outrage. Instead, she just gave her the world's smallest wave goodbye, then shooed her in the direction of the door. "Go on, get out of here. Good luck saving the world," Ritsuko said, and wasn't surprised to find that the sentiment was entirely sarcastic.

This world didn't deserve to be saved.

Misato nodded, because she was taking this seriously even if Ritsuko wasn't. "Keep your hands where I can see them," she told the Fifth Child.

He held them up in front of him: like this?

On the way to the meeting room, Kaworu had put his hands behind his back after walking backwards got awkward, so he could look forward and Misato could still see his hands.

Shinji just kept Misato between him and Kaworu, grateful that Misato and Ritsuko hadn't commented on the, the kissing. He wanted to run away, but what if Kaworu asked where he was going and Misato wondered _why _he was going and noticed? Maybe if he acted like it had never happened, it would have never happened? He couldn't go back to Misato's now, she'd tease him _mercilessly_.

The Third Child almost jumped out of his skin when nine black monoliths appeared out of nowhere in the dark room Misato led them into.

"You're late," came from one of them, in a distorted, disapproving voice.

"Dr. Akagi had a gun," Kaworu said calmly. "I have been instructed to avoid trouble in situations like that."

"Dr. Akagi?" another monolith asked, surprised.

"She showed me something interesting," Kaworu said, sitting down on the single metal folding chair in the room and crossing his legs.

"Colonel Katsuragi, thank you for retrieving the Fifth Child. You are dismissed."

"No," Kaworu said calmly. "I want them here for this."

"Tabris… what do you think you are doing?" the sixth monolith said, wariness coming through despite the distortion.

"It is unimportant," came from the first. "We all know his place in the scenario."

"To grant you Lilim godhood, with the power of the White Seed and the flesh of the Black," Kaworu said, nodding once. "I know. I also know that this," he said, pointing to his chest, "isn't the only vessel you have for the soul of Adam, isn't it? The data you took from me, including my brainwaves: that was just to make sure the soul would be drawn to those vessels instead of going with me into death, wasn't it? So even if I failed… No, even if I chose to die as myself instead of becoming one with you disgusting Lilim, you could still use _my _soul to get you what you wanted!" He had surged up out of that chair, red eyes flashing, nonchalant pose utterly forgotten. "Were you planning for me to die instead of granting you Instrumentality? Is that part of the prophecies, of your ridiculous scenario?!"

"You will die at the hands of Shinji Ikari and Unit 01, Tabris. The vessel of Adam, the final messenger, will be slain by the work of the Lilim. You are merely an ingredient for our ascendance: you should have known this all along. What did it matter that you would fail to reach Lilith? You should thank us for allowing you to think that your precious individual existence had any greater significance at all," came that disdainful voice. "No, Tabris. We Lilim will achieve Godhood through our own efforts, not yours. Your rage against your fate, this tantrum of yours is insignificant. Just as Adam's fury signified nothing. Ikari will do his duty with Unit 01, and all will proceed in accordance with the prophecy. The Eva series is made from the flesh of Adam: your little toys will have no effect on their ability to perform the ritual. Instrumentality will unite the soul of the Lilim into one, incorporating all the Lilim that have ever existed: you have not even managed to reduce the perfection of our complementation."

Kaworu's head had bowed down under the weight of those words, or so it would have seen if Misato and Shinji hadn't seen his hands clench into fists. "Using Shinji to kill me… Is that why you told me to observe him? To make sure that this emotion would be inflicted upon me? So that was your scheme." He laughed, low and darkly. "Too late, old men. He can't kill me if he can't sync with Unit 01, and that Eva is made of the flesh of Lilith, not Adam. As for sending your assassins to kill me? Go ahead. Let them come to play with me in my garden. Spend their worthless lives. You're the one who taught me that Lilim were a cursed, evil existence that should not be, _Keel_, and you think I'll sacrifice myself to bless you with godhood? No, you weren't that stupid all along, were you? You knew that I would rather die than give you _bastards _what you wanted!"

His head snapped up to glare at Keel's monolith, red eyes glowing in the darkness of the soundproofed room, a flickering grey light beginning to fill the room. Misato didn't need to hear the sirens to know that the Magi must have just detected an AT field.

That of the Twelfth Angel.

"You damn old man… I'll kill you myself," the angel said, low and dangerous, ignoring the three shots that pinged off his AT field in rapid succession. Misato didn't dare fire any more, not after the triple-tap failed and a ricochet might hit Shinji. He didn't even spare her a glance as the monoliths wavered and faded to static, shifting his gaze to the ceiling.

Well.

That was the first time an angel broke _out _through the roof of NERV.

* * *

"Sync ratio… Zero," was all Maya could say.

"Damn," Shinji said to himself, head bowed, trying to make the Eva move again. "Damn…"

"It's not your fault, Shinji." She'd expected this.

"What do you mean?" Fuyutsuki asked Misato.

"The angel said something about this, how Shinji couldn't kill him if his sync ratio was zero. If he couldn't pilot the Eva. It looks like the Twelfth Angel went after our last pilot, after the Tenth and Eleventh took out the other two." Asuka insane, Rei dead and now Shinji powerless. They had Rei's replacement, but if Rei was really Lilith, an angel just like Kaworu? "Get on reformatting Unit 02's core so Rei can pilot it." It was still the best chance they had.

For revenge, if nothing else. "Hopefully Ritsuko will be able to figure out how to undo… whatever he did to you, Shinji," Misato said, trying to sound reassuring. "We'll bring both Evas with us to Europe." Where NERV Germany had already been reduced to rubble in the battle between Kaworu and two of the Eva Series. Or rather, despite the efforts of those two Evas.

"Unit 01 will remain here," Gendo said from behind his folded hands. "Along with Rei."

"_We'll see about that, you bastard_," Misato thought, but said nothing for now.

* * *

"Where did all these people come from?" Shinji asked her, staring about them in the halls.

"Refugees," Misato told him. "They're why I can't give you your own quarters." Well, half the reason. The other half was keeping him under guard, after the results of Ritsuko's genetic analysis of Shinji. And Ritsuko herself. Misato dreaded finding out what her own test results would show: the result she should want was the one that horrified her. "The geofront is easy to seal up." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Keep your head down." There were enough glares being cast at her because she was in a NERV uniform, because NERV couldn't do anything to protect them. At least Shinji's face had mostly been kept out of the media. Maybe they thought he was her brother or something.

They'd already had to set up airlocks for the military convoys coming in, carrying supplies for a siege. If only NERV's defense budget hadn't been slashed, they would have been able to repair the exterior of the geofront faster. At least they'd already patched up where Kaworu smashed his way out.

Since the angel had left, the most dangerous place on the planet was now the safest place.

* * *

He pulled at her out of the entry plug, and all she could do was try to scrabble at his arms, fighting to return to the safety of the LCL before... She tried not to inhale, but her cheeks, every bit of exposed flesh burned.

"You should have stayed in the Black Egg and waited," he told her, and she couldn't answer, couldn't even breathe in through her nose when she was desperate enough for air her body overrode her mind. "It's your children that I hate… but if you hadn't come here, hadn't taken _my _world from me, then those bastards would never have been born. I owe the previous yous for two things, but this is all I owe _you_: to die here, and be free of the Lilim. I'll make sure they don't have any more vessels to trap you in, don't worry."

Blood pouring from her right ear, the Third Rei didn't live long enough to hear his final words.

He let go of her plugsuit, and the last vessel of Lilith fell among the pale octarine flowers.

* * *

"Why didn't you let me go?" Shinji demanded of Misato.

"Because you can't pilot, remember? He made sure of that. That's why we can't give Asuka the counteragent, in case she can ever pilot again." The woman who had replaced Commander Ikari after he died resisting the troops that came to take Rei to pilot Unit 02 shook her head. "At least they were able to recover Unit 02." Unit 01 was functional, but they couldn't take it outside the geofront. They'd hoped that since Rei was an angel, she could survive outside her Eva for more than a few seconds but no, not when those idiots sent her to fight Kaworu in Switzerland, where he'd spent two months already trying to dig SEELE and their supporters up out of deeply-buried vaults and hidey-holes. The country was carpeted by his creations, but they weren't willing to wait until he moved on to somewhere else, no. That would be sensible, and who could be sensible when the wind kept blowing, the ocean's currents kept moving, and those _things _of his kept spreading? There were _animals _now, ten sucker-legged burrowing, acid-spitting things that might as well have been designed to bore holes in tanks, to decimate the troops sent to recover Eva Unit 02. "And we need you here, in Ritsuko's lab. Until he gets here."

"He'll just do something else if we don't kill him!" Shinji said, brown eyes glaring at her, and she wondered where this venom had come from? Shinji had gone practically catatonic after finding out that his lover had done all this, had been planning all this for years and was responsible for Second Impact to begin with, but he'd never shown this much of a killer instinct before.

Was it watching all the people die in Ritsuko's labs, as the doctors scrambled to try to create antivenoms? Everyone who was brought here was supposed to be clean, but half of them had already died of cancer from trace exposures, and they'd lost entire wards before they identified who had something growing in their lungs, or in a sweater that hadn't been decontaminated thoroughly enough…

Adam and Lilith: those entities were meant to create entire biospheres, to colonize worlds. And what happened to the targets of colonization? What happened to the native life?

Even if Kaworu, if Adam, hadn't been deliberately trying to eliminate humanity, that was the nature of the beast. Earth's native species couldn't hold out against organisms designed to take over, to wipe them out. An ecosystem wasn't just plants and animals: it was the bacteria that returned nitrogen to the soil, the fungi that broke down rocks and dead trees and countless more things too small to see that served as a foundation for everything else. That had to be there for those other things to thrive.

In order to recover their planet, they would have to sterilize everything and then rebuild from the ground up, reseed countless species of insignificant things no one had bothered to add to DNA libraries yet, even in the aftermath of Second Impact, because they were taken for granted. It was multicellular life that was fragile, that couldn't adapt fast enough to massive climate change and other hazards, not singlecellular.

It hadn't taken long for the UN's researchers to admit that saving any of earth's original biosphere was just not going to happen.

Was this what happened to Adam's creations when Lilith landed? With their progenitor sealed away, unable to counter the species Lilith released?

Honestly, Misato didn't fucking care. It was their planet now, there were, or had been, billions of people living on it. No kind of history could make it okay to murder them, whether it be in the fire and flood of Second Impact or the choking, whimpering deaths of this new assault from Adam.

What the hell had SEELE been thinking, _raising _that thing? Not noticing that it was creating life and releasing it when their own damn scrolls said that this was what these things _did_?! Even if they needed it to keep Adam from getting its soul back, they could at least have kept it locked away as an obvious biohazard!

Too late now. Almost too late.

There were people who thought Misato was the one who should have been shot, not Gendo. Because now it was looking like SEELE might have been right about one thing. Instrumentality would overwrite all life on Earth. It might be the only way for humanity to survive in _any _form.

Well, not just yet.

Of course, the origin of that other way wasn't helping Misato's credibility either, but she was trying to keep Shinji as insulated from that as she could.

"Well, you have to let me go this time! They showed me that psych profile too: Ritsuko's a scientist, there's no way he'll let his guard down!"

"I am," Misato told him. "Letting you go," she said, to forstall his angry response at the idea that _she _was the one who was going. "As long as you don't try to save us, you hear me? He has to think that he's smashed this place. He has to think that everyone here is dead or dying. He can't find out what we've been working on."

"But…"

"He _knows_ that the prophecies said he'd let his guard down around you. If you attack him and it doesn't work, then it could be years before you have another chance. _Years_, Shinji. Years we _won't have _if you don't keep him distracted. Except for SEELE, and now us, he hasn't _bothered _to make an effort to destroy the vaults. Your job is to _keep it that way_." She gripped his shoulders, tight. "What he did to the three of us to let us survive in his new world: he can design new things, alter his creations, to kill us just as easy as everyone else." So few genes, such small adaptations. Just like how angels were almost completely identical to humans. Almost.

What Kaworu did to Shinji to enable him to survive in the new biosphere was simple enough human science could replicate it, could create a retrovirus to patch those adaptations into other people's genes, with the expertise gained after years of trying to modify species to let them survive the massive environmental change of Second Impact. Human genetic modification was a last resort, but right now it was the only alternative to instrumentality, and with Rei dead they couldn't set off Third Impact, not without catching Kaworu. "And if he doesn't want to keep you alive, if he doesn't design countermeasures, then how can you get them to us? You need to stay alive and make sure he wants you to stay alive: do you understand, Shinji? It doesn't matter if you kill him if we're left with a world we can't survive in!" Misato said, and knew that it was a lie. What mattered to her, what she wanted, was for the angel to die. To finally have revenge for her father and her entire world.

But it wasn't about her and what she wanted. This was about _survival_.

* * *

"Hello, Shinji," Kaworu said happily, a flower tucked behind his ear and dried blood staining his shoes and socks, and it was hard for Shinji not to throw up at the wrongness of it. How someone could look so cheerful and innocent, so _oblivious _when they'd knowingly, deliberately killed so many people. How could Kaworu not care? How could he snap that kitten's neck and not _care_? How could he smile to see that Shinji was still alive when he'd killed so many people who deserved to live so much more than Shinji?

He didn't need to see their names on a list to know that there was no chance, no chance at all, that Kensuke and Hikari were still alive. Or Touji's little sister or _anyone _who had been in that school. There was too much risk that people who left Tokyo-3 that late had already been exposed: none of the shelters would have taken them in, at least none of the shelters that were possibly still functioning.

That white hair: Kaworu looked like, Kaworu _was _death. The death of this entire world.

Creating behemoths, like the angels if they weren't angels themselves, to smash in here? Walking to his old room over dead bodies, and hopefully he thought that all of them were dead, when he'd ripped some of those gas masks off himself?

At least Ritsuko had self-destructed the Magi before his hack got far enough that he could have possibly seen what they'd been working on all this time, the retroviruses that were the reason that there was any chance that even a fraction of those bodies were only playing dead?

He didn't have to pretend helpless horror as Kaworu knelt down on the bed next to him. Didn't have to pretend that he was far too overwhelmed to possibly come up with a plan to kill Kaworu when that hand touched his face, and there was blood and some sort of silvery dust on that hand, just like the petals of that flower and in that moment he was convinced that Kaworu was going to kill him too.

Because that would be the _sane _thing. A monster that killed billions of people shouldn't greet him with a smile, shouldn't frown when he saw that Shinji was upset, shouldn't stroke his hair as one of the great white shaggy beasts, as though he'd made them while remembering that murdered cat, prowled past the open door.

All of a sudden Shinji couldn't breathe, and he wondered if Kaworu had realized the plan somehow, if that flower was something meant to kill Shinji and all the people who were counting on Shinji, on what Kaworu did to Shinji, to save them.

He let out a sound that he couldn't even describe, because god, this was, this was insane and he'd held it together watching death after death after death, after Asuka breathed her last because they hadn't managed to keep the ward sterile _enough_, and now Kaworu was stroking his back gently and asking what was wrong like he didn't _know_, like he wasn't the one who had _done this_, and that was when Shinji started to laugh hysterically.

At least it worked, even if Kaworu didn't understand it at all, even as he carried Shinji out of there, to some valley like something out of a postcard of fairyland. As he coaxed Shinji to eat with strange fruits, holding them to his lips and asking how Shinji liked them as though they were just, just nice things, not deadly poison. He knew that he should try to remember what they looked like, since they were something that people could eat. The people who had been altered like Shinji, anyway.

It wasn't like there would be anything else to eat before too much longer, as stockpiles wore out or were broken into. One of Kaworu's lichens _loved _concrete, and thinking of that killed Shinji's appetite even though he was trying to stay alive and let Kaworu spoil him, really he was.

Because while Kaworu was here with Shinji, then he wasn't anywhere else, doing anything else.

When Kaworu kissed him, then he wasn't kiling people. Except he was, because the retrovirus still had to be made, still had to be transported, and Shinji _hoped _there were still people alive it hadn't gotten too yet, because the alternative was that those people were dead, were dying _right now_, as he lay here and…

"You hate me, don't you," Kaworu said, and smiled. "I don't mind: you Lilim do want to touch and be close to people more if you hate them. I'm letting Dr. Akagi and the other one live for now, but not forever."

Wait, did that mean that he already was planning to make something that would kill them? When their adaptations were the same as the one he'd given Shinji, the same everyone was using?

"I'll keep you with me forever," Kaworu told him, pushing Shinji down. Startled, he landed with a whump amidst the flowers, so many of them he couldn't feel the ground or any rocks under them. "That's what love is, wanting to touch someone," he said, touching the front of Shinji's chest, "and kiss them." When he removed his lips from Shinji's unresisting ones, he finished, "and wanting them to live. We'll be together forever, Shinji, and once the last of those bastards are dead, I'll fill this world with my children. Our children." He smiled, and it was clear that he had no idea why that would possibly not sound wonderful to Shinji, and all Shinji could do was lie there and try not to throw up.

* * *

No one came, not even Misato or Ritsuko. There were still spy satillites up there: sometimes Shinji could see lights that couldn't possibly be any star. It was easy to see the stars: he doubted there were any city lights left. Not when they could be seen from overhead, not when that would have let Kaworu know that people were still alive. If Shinji couldn't keep him busy enough.

Sometimes Kaworu did want to travel, to show Shinji somewhere else, and there was only so much Shinji could to do dissuade him, when he didn't want Kaworu to wonder why, realize that Shinji was trying to protect anyone. That there was anyone left to protect.

Shinji could hardly bear to talk to him, so it was better to let Kaworu talk at him, and even to let Kaworu do things to him. He'd thought before that he preferred to be alone, but to be alone with nothing but silence and the calls of alien animals? He thought of running away a few times, making Kaworu take the time to track him down, but if Shinji really was immortal, then what if Kaworu didn't chase him? What if he waited for Shinji to come crawling back? What if Shinji found people, or they found him in order to make contact, and then Kaworu found them too?

Or what if he didn't find anyone, if he spent decades searching the world and didn't find anyone because he'd failed, and then, when he saw Kaworu again, he was so desperate for someone, _anyone_, that he couldn't hate him anymore? If that happened, then Kaworu would have gotten everything he wanted, and Shinji couldn't let that happen. For the sake of Misato, Rei, Asuka: everyone.

How would he even go about killing Kaworu? Forget his AT field, he'd need a weapon. A gun, a sharp rock, something. Since Kaworu was an angel, Shinji would have to destroy his core, and he didn't know where that was. Would cutting his throat even keep him down long enough for Shinji to dig around and find it, before he started healing himself?

He wished he could ask Misato, but the only person there to ask _anything _was Kaworu.

* * *

"It's the same place yours is," Kaworu said, tapping the center of Shinji's chest as they lay there under the watchful stars.

"What?" was all Shinji could say. Kaworu had talked about making him immortal, but, "That's…"

"You weren't eating enough, so you needed the energy," Kaworu said matter-of-factly, as though he was talking about trying to cook someone's favorite foods instead of turning them into an angel.

"I don't feel any different," Shinji said, and immediately wished he hadn't, because he didn't _want _to feel different.

"Do you want me to show you how to use the light of your soul? Oh, that's what you Lilim used to call the AT Field."

"I know." Shinji had asked him about his AT field before, figuring that was safer than directly asking about where Kaworu was vulnerable. "Use it? Like an Eva?" If he had an AT Field now, then? It took an AT field to fight another AT field.

Being turned into an angel meant he could fight Kaworu.

* * *

Kaworu was delighted, happy to teach Shinji to use it. It was the first thing he'd been genuinely interested in for… how long? Shinji had no idea how much time had passed. Months? He hoped not more than a year.

It stung, how much Kaworu wanted him to be happy, how much Kaworu wanted to play with him. How he'd brought so many plants and animals, flowers and still-working instruments to make Shinji happy, completely failing to grasp why Shinji was so unhappy.

Shinji didn't even want to try to explain it to him. What would happen if Kaworu did understand? It wasn't like what he'd done could be forgiven. It wasn't like Shinji wouldn't have to kill him anyway: what he was doing was the nature of these creatures, according to Ritsuko. Or maybe that was an excuse for why it was becoming hard to hate him. Why Shinji almost wanted to hurry up and kill him before he understood the horror of what he'd done.

Before humanity ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, weren't they supposed to be innocent? That was the thing about Kaworu, that horrible _innocence_, how he didn't understand the difference between good and evil. He didn't know. He was trying to be good to Shinji, trying so hard, and Shinji knew that Kaworu really did love him.

That was made him raise his own hand to touch Kaworu sometimes, to smooth that lengthening silver hair back and do things to make him smile. Not just that keeping Kaworu happy meant keeping him distracted and other people safe.

He needed a haircut, Shinji thought. They both did.

And that was when it hit him.

* * *

It was easy.

He hadn't thought that at the time.

At the time, he'd been in a panic of _this is taking too long, and what if he recovers while I've still got my hand in his stomach like this, before I find the core, and he's looking up at me make it stop, make him stop_.

But then he'd found it, and the hardest part hadn't been slitting Kaworu's throat, or turning him over, or slashing open his stomach or even smashing the core. The hardest part was feeling up through his stomach, up under the ribs, and finding the damn thing.

A little ball maybe three centimeters across, no more. So much smaller than Kaworu's heart.

And he could tell that Kaworu was alive until Shinji found it. That heart had kept beating, coating Shinji with blood, he'd kept breathing, kept looking up at Shinji like that, and Shinji had wished he could tell him that it would all be over soon.

He thought he'd seen Kaworu move his lips, try to speak despite his cut throat. Try to ask why.

He'd died not understanding why Shinji, why the person he loved, was killing him_._

"Good," Shinji managed to say finally, feeling on the edge of hysterics again. "Good."

He closed Kaworu's eyes, even if there was nothing he could do to make the rest of that body presentable at all, not with its-his guts hanging out like that. "So it really was right around here," Shinji said, touching his collarbone, and knew that he didn't want Misato to see him like this. Not when he'd been turned into an angel, not when he'd used his AT field to cut through Kaworu's skin, breaking through it so easily he hadn't really needed to avoid the rib cage, had he?

All he would really have to do would be to stab through right over the core, like _this…_

* * *

"So it wasn't Stockholm Syndrome," was all Misato could say when the autopsy revealed that Shinji had a core. "He didn't kill himself out of guilt, he did his duty as a pilot by killing the last angel." She'd do everything she could to make that the official interpretation, use this to shut up everyone who thought Shinji had been hesitating. Tricking the angel into training him, finding an excuse to get a weapon: he'd even cut some of Kaworu's hair with that knife before striking, to lure him into a false sense of security. She couldn't have done it any better herself.

She could only hope that was what the history books were going to say.

* * *

_And I write an actual Evil!Kaworu 'verse, finally. _

_"The Colour Out of Space" (English spelling) is a cosmic horror story. Rough premise in modern terms: alien organisms land on Earth, start outperforming native ones and gradually spreading, like the theory that Mars was dying because the previous ecosystem was being overrun by an incompatible one (Something like this is a Dothraki legend in the Game of Thrones TV series). In the Evaverse, this happened because of Lilith's arrival._

_In our universe it was caused by air pollution: a new form of energy generation released a byproduct in the form of an _incredibly _corrosive gas into the atmosphere, the perpetrators not only killing almost every living thing other than themselves but destroying the molecular compounds practically all other life on Earth fed on, too. The name of this deadly substance? Oxygen._

_Do not fuck with plants, because they will poison your ass. Using a WMD (chemical weapon) to wipe out almost all other life on Earth is pretty impressive, no? _

_Since earth-type life in the Evaverse is panspermia, taking over other planets, eliminating native life is something seed-generated life would do by default, or rather design._


	16. To See You Again

_Giftfic for Literary Eagle, who did cover art for Joie de Vivre. She wanted a non-depressing story to round out this collection. My original attempt at it was a story where SEELE took little Shinji when Gendo would have abandoned him anyway thinking he would make a good hostage against Gendo (hah) and had him raised with Kaworu, but I didn't really have inspiration for that beyond the scene where the two of them first met. _

_Then I realized that, given what's been revealed about Rebuild…_

_Oh, and personally, Gendo is just such a sub to Yui, I'm sorry. Or really no, I'm not._

* * *

Holding the kitten to his chest, Shinji walked towards the sound of the piano. That was definitely a real piano, not just a recording, even though all the little imperfections he'd heard were the result of an unturned instrument, not an unskilled player. It was a miracle the piano was even this intact, amidst the wreckage.

A white-haired boy came into view and Shinji paused, suddenly feeling… Well, this must be the person who used to live here. Shinji had destroyed his home, so he shouldn't expect this person to do anything other than yell at him. Muddled fear and anticipation gripped him as he held the kitten carefully, and stepped forward.

"Ode to Joy. I heard the song here: it's Ode to Joy," the boy said, and turned.

"_He looks like Rei_," was what Shinji thought, suddenly struck with a feeling of recognition. Yet while Rei wasn't in touch with her emotions, this boy's eyes were open and vulnerable. They were unreadable not because they were blank, but because there were so many feelings flowing through them, overwhelming him. "_He's trembling_?" Shinji realized. Walking carefully towards him, he asked, "Are you okay?" suddenly filled with fear again, but not fear of hatred or rejection. Was it the resemblance to Ayanami, who he had seen wounded too many times, making him worried?

"Concern for something other than yourself," the boy breathed, and slung himself over the piano bench.

Before Shinji could react there were arms around him, and his reaction when he finally processed that this was happening, stumbling back, made him lose his balance.

The other boy's arms around his body were the only things keeping him from falling.

"It's just like back then," Shinji heard him say as he tried to get his feet back under him. "I finally managed to meet you again! You! Every time I tried to change anything, to meet you earlier, either you didn't exist or you were a different person or I messed up and I was why you weren't there to meet me… I brought food. For the cat," he said when the kitten finally lost its temper and scratched at him, wanting to be put _down _before the huge things crushed it or tipped over and crushed it.

He didn't seem to mind, almost snatching it from Shinji's hands as Shinji tried to regain his mental balance now.

Yes. Definitely like Rei. In that he was _weird_. Also he was humming: it was weird that it was off-key, when if his piano-playing was so perfect he had to know better than that, but the sound of it was whimsical enough that Shinji realized the other boy just didn't care, was just humming for the sake of playing with the sound as the struggling cat was put down on top of the piano, in among sushi platters. There was a strange, natural grace to the very imperfection of the sound: art, not artifice.

"Do I know you?" Shinji asked, remembering the first day he came to Tokyo-3, how he'd thought he'd seen a girl that looked like Rei in the street before he even met Rei. It couldn't have been her, though, not when Rei was so badly wounded. Another way they were alike: they both gave him the same feeling of déjà vu.

The same feeling of 'I have to protect this person' he'd had when he looked at Rei's broken body and knew that she would die if he refused to pilot the Eva.

"I don't know. Do you?" the white-haired boy asked him, tilting his head curiously as he poked the cat's mouth with a piece of tuna. "I'm Kaworu Nagisa, and of course you're Shinji Ikari. I know you, but everyone knows you."

Knew what a failure and a screw-up he was.

He was the reason Touji was dead.

When he looked down at his shoes, that was when he heard a quick patter of footsteps again, found arms around him again. "You're sad for other people, aren't you?" the boy said excitedly. "Because of the precious people you've lost. That's who you are!" Shinji felt soft lips nuzzle his cheek: pure affection, like a kitten's lick. "I'm so glad that you're you. You'll let me be one of your precious people, right? I know a lot more now and I'll try really hard to keep you from hating me."

The boy drew back enough to smile at him, and somehow he'd taken Shinji's hands in his own. The bright, radiant joy of that smile made Shinji shiver, because someone this kind? As weirdly enthusiastic about it as they were?

"You're an Eva pilot," Shinji realized. "You're here to replace Touji." Because Touji was dead. One of Shinji's first real friends was dead, and now he couldn't show his face to Hikari or Kensuke, because Touji was dead.

"I'm here to replace Asuka," Kaworu corrected him. "I can pilot Unit 02, so she won't have to fight A-the next angel."

"Her sync ratio," Shinji realized, letting out a breath. "She'll hate that," but it was better than sending her out there to be killed if she wasn't good enough. She could just retire until she could pilot again, and stay safe. It made him wince, but at least most of her fury would be directed at Kaworu, and Shinji was used to Asuka. It was fine, as long as she stayed alive.

Kaworu nodded. "But she'll listen to me about opening her heart to the Eva once she's angry enough that I can pilot Unit 02 better than she can. I know how to save her, but you… I'm so glad I got to meet you again!"

And now Shinji was hugged tight again, overwhelmed by Kaworu's joy. Held tight, it felt as though some of that joy might pass into him by osmosis, that Kaworu was trying to press it into him, to cheer Shinji up by force of the arms around him.

"I've been ordered to observe you again, so we can spend time together! I brought a book on sleepovers for when you come stay with me!"

Stay with him? To get away from Asuka, who would be furious her Eva was being given to someone else?

That sounded like a really good idea.

Especially after Asuka punched Kaworu in the face after she ran into him right outside the bathroom and he told her that she needed to open her heart to the Eva and that was why he'd been sent to replace her. He really should have seen that coming.

Seeing how it didn't dim that smile, Shinji wondered if he had.

* * *

As Rei's cries echoed through the command chamber, Shinji pleaded with his father to, "Let me out there!"

It was clear that Gendo would have preferred to send Kaworu, but instead, "Shinji. Get in your Eva, proceed to Terminal Dogma and retrieve the Lance."

Shinji was too busy thinking "_Finally!_" to wonder why him, especially when Kaworu was already ready to go in Unit 02 or listen to Misato's demands for an explanation. Wouldn't doing that cause Third Impact? Shinji didn't care about the risk, not when... Rei…

"You're like me," were the first words Rei said when she opened her eyes, looking up at Kaworu.

So Shinji wasn't the only one who thought so, then?

Kaworu nodded, hand still touching her hair. "We've both been changed by bonds with others, so we are the same now, even though we weren't back then. At first I was the one who hadn't been changed, and then I was changed, but you reverted to your original state. But we both love the same person now, so we're the same. I've decided that's the most important thing."

"That we love him, and wish for his happiness," Rei said, closing her eyes and leaning into Kaworu's hand, as it slid down to cup the side of her face.

"Will you help me?" Kaworu asked her.

She frowned, opening her eyes again to look up at him. "You should not need to ask."

"You're not always the same person, just like…" Kaworu shuddered, curling in on himself a little.

"True," Rei acknowledged. "I was different, before I met Shinji. If I hadn't recovered quickly, I'm certain that the Commander would have ordered Dr. Akagi to finish off this me. I had hoped that my feelings would live on in the Third, but it seems they would not have revived in time to make any difference. How is it that your feelings live on?"

"They don't. Not in the Second. Or the Third, although there's only been a Third a handful of times, and usually the Second is pulled into the instrumentality too quickly for it to start remembering the way you did when you were the Third. I'm the only life on this world that possesses the Fruit of Wisdom and isn't born of Lilith," he explained. "To possess the fruits of both Life and Wisdom: the old men seem to think that would make someone a god."

"That is what the Ikaris believe as well."

"What are you talking about?" Shinji asked, finally speaking up. The rest of the conversation had gone well over his head, but now they were talking about him. Or his parents?

Two pale heads turned to him, Kaworu's shock of white and Rei's pale blue. Two pairs of matching red eyes examined him, and now there was more than a little fear in Kaworu's.

Rei's, too. "The two of us, we are the same," she said slowly. "We were both made to be tools."

"The old men want to set off Third Impact _their _way," Kaworu said. "Your old man, too. SEELE wants to use me, except for Keel who wants me to… let myself die so he can use the Mass-Production Evas and humanity can attain godhood by its own power. Gendo and Yui Ikari want to use Adam's flesh and her." He glanced at Rei to illustrate who he meant by her. "That's how I can pilot Unit 02 even though it hasn't been reset for me, and how I could wake her up. How I messed with the cameras to hide that she's woken up and we're having this conversation, too."

Shinji was silent for a moment. Despite what Misato demanded of his father, yet more proof that they were all being lied to about what would cause Third Impact, about what was really going on, he hadn't really needed that proof. He'd known from the beginning that his father couldn't be up to anything good. If anything, it was surprising that Rei admitted it. "So you're like the Evas?"

"The exact opposite of the Evas, actually," Kaworu said brightly, and it was a relief to see him grin again. "The Evas are Lilim – that's your kind of human – souls in bodies made from the flesh of Adam or Lilith."

So, the opposite of that would be…

Shinji hadn't even completed the thought when Rei confessed, "I contain the soul of Lilith. She is the one hidden in Terminal Dogma, and without her soul, even reaching Lilith's flesh would not let the angels trigger Third Impact."

"That isn't why you were made, though." What did Gendo Ikari care about protecting the world from Third Impact? "It's half of why I was made, though," Kaworu said, smile gone. Both of them were looking away from Shinji now, so afraid of rejection it was impossible to be afraid of them. "Otherwise, Adam would heal herself and wake up eventually. Second Impact was triggered by what they did to create me and nearly destroy her before she woke up and went looking for an angel to cause what you refer to as Third Impact. She and the other angels would have destroyed all you Lilim anyway. If her soul wasn't contained… Now she has reason to hate the Lilim for what they did to her, not just Lilith for taking her planet."

"Rei… Even if you are an angel, you're my… my friend. And Kaworu, you didn't have to help Rei like that, or tell me something like this. I couldn't ever hate either of you," Shinji said, and was struck with déjà vu. Again.

_I never said I hated you. _

Finding himself suddenly hugged by an affectionate Kaworu was starting to feel, if not normal, more nice than weird. People weren't so demonstrative, so being hugged wasn't normal in absolute terms, but it seemed normal by Kaworu standards. That he was just someone who was so open with his feelings, and what he felt for Shinji was, well, this.

It made him blush and want to protest that he wasn't really a very good person, that he didn't deserve this. Not when he was a coward and he'd failed Touji. He, he wanted to accept this, though. He wanted someone to feel this way about him. He wanted someone to be glad to see him.

His arms were hanging stiffly at his sides.

He was being incredibly cruel, he realized.

It was hard, to raise his arms. To wrap them around Kaworu. He wasn't just being hugged anymore: he was hugging someone now. He hadn't had this since he was small. His mother.

His mother who died.

If Kaworu and Rei were angels, his father was going to order him to kill them. Misato, too. That was the only thing they wanted him around for. Asuka had already asked – no, demanded – why Misato wasn't throwing her out, since she wasn't a pilot anymore. 'Standby' or no standby.

…Did Misato suspect? Was that why she'd said, so darkly, that she was sure they'd need Asuka again soon, that they'd be forced to give her another chance? Hopefully that was only because they'd lost Rei, right?

That was when they heard the alarm.

Rei started to push herself up.

"No," Kaworu told her. "Don't be a fool. I showed you that if you fight this angel, you'll die. You won't be yourself anymore, just like what the last angel would have done to Asuka."

Asuka? Shinji was startled, but then it made perfect, horrible sense. She would have wanted to prove herself, since her sync rate was low. It would have been Asuka out there instead of Rei. Was Kaworu only able to help Rei like this because she was another angel?

Strange, that it was easy to think of them as angels, even though they weren't monsters.

Strange that knowing they were angels didn't make them seem like monsters at all, even though one of the angels did this to Rei, and another… But it wasn't that angel that killed Touji, now was it?

"But, Shinji…"

"I'll fight Armisael," Kaworu promised her. "Seriously, this time."

"This time?"

Kaworu nodded instead of answering the question. "Everything's going to be perfect this time, I know it. Since I managed to meet you again, and you granted my wish. Even last time you granted my wish, even if it was the wrong wish. I really thought you hated me until you proved you didn't, but since you did care for me and you used your hands I'm going to make everything perfect for you and you'll love me back."

An excited, happy stream of words that caught Shinji up in them, drowned him in the warm red of Kaworu's eyes except he could still breathe there, like LCL. Even though he couldn't think, couldn't understand any of this.

Except it felt warm. "We've met before, then?" he managed to say, because that did explain everything.

Maybe even how he felt right now. He still wasn't used to being hugged, but his arms around Kaworu felt like he should know this, somehow. Felt right.

_If this is truly what you want… If this is your one wish… I can't grant anyone else's wishes, I can't make anyone happy. If killing angels is all I'm good for, then isn't it a good thing that I can make someone happy by doing that?_

"If I can keep you from having to suffer anymore… If this will show you that I don't hate you," some part of Shinji said, as the rest of him listened, not knowing what would come out of his mouth next. "What you did for the cat was what you wanted for yourself, wasn't it? You were never cruel, I just didn't understand you. You wanted me to touch you, wanted me to accept your feelings and your wishes. I smiled, because making you happy made me happy. Because it made me happy to do something for you. To free you, the way I wanted to be freed. I realized I did return your feelings, I was drawn to you, but it was too late."

"You do remember me." Kaworu looked amazed, again, like Shinji was the most amazing thing and Kaworu could stare at him forever and still be enthralled, even though Shinji wasn't interesting or smart or handsome or anything. "This feeling: I want to kiss you right now. I want to kiss you _so much_."

_This feeling… is this love?_

_What would it be like if you loved me back?_

Kaworu was peering at him now, clearly having realized a moment after he said it that saying it at all, never mind so bluntly, might disturb Shinji.

"Were we… lovers?" Shinji found himself asking, not certain whether it was surprise, morbid curiosity or hope that forced the question past his lips.

"I loved you." Ducking his head to the side, Kaworu said, "You ha-"

"I never hated you!" Sudden fury that made him grip Kaworu's shoulders, made him want to shake him, to push him back (banging into the lockers when there were no lockers in this room) and corner him. "I never hated you," Shinji said softly once the moment passed. "I know I never did. Not if I reacted that way. You frustrated me, but I never hated you. I wanted you to know that." Still wanted him to know that, enough to pull such an immediate reaction out of him. "You can't have been my enemy," Shinji knew, and relaxed a little, relieved. "Even if you are an angel, you weren't my enemy." Not when the thought of anything happening to Kaworu was like, like if something happened to Rei. "You looked sad when you thought I wouldn't want to kiss you: I don't want to see you like that. You wanted to be one of my precious people, someone I wanted to protect? You already are. I, I don't want you to make that face. I don't want you to be sad, I don't want you to die."

_I don't want you to be sad enough that you want to die._

"I think I was attracted to you." It was a lot easier to say that in the past tense, about a Shinji that wasn't the same as the Shinji here and now. "I couldn't help it. But kissing is…"

"Like being naked together," Kaworu nodded and Shinji nearly sputtered because how had they gone from discussing what would actually be his first kiss to getting na-naked?! "But you don't mind touching me now even when you're not angry, and you want me to live, so that's two out of three."

"Two out of three whats?" was what Shinji wanted to know, still blushing.

"Signs you love me back," Kaworu said happily. "I want to touch you, and kiss you, and I want you to live because I love you.

"No one's every said they loved me before. Except you," Shinji realized. "You told me that before, didn't you?"

Was that why part of him remembered Kaworu?

It had to be. How could he ever forget someone telling they loved him and meaning it? Because all of Kaworu's emotions showed in his eyes: there was no way he could ever lie with them. Did he even know how to lie? "Say it again," Shinji asked him. "That you love me."

Kaworu blinked at him, and now there was color in his pale cheeks. "You care about my feelings? You, I love you," he said, and there was wetness gleaming in the corners of his eyes now.

The other boy (a boy, but he looked so pretty, no, so perfect) sniffled, and some impulse in Shinji made him wipe away those tears (_get them away, make him stop being sad, because if he is miserable he will die again and you'll lose someone that loves you_). That was what made Kaworu burst into tears, fling himself against Shinji's chest again not holding Shinji to him, but pleading to be held to Shinji. Hands grasping at his chest instead of wrapped around his back.

Of course his arms wrapped around him, some instinct telling him what to do, to tuck that silver head under his chin, and that was when his phone rang. Misato, surely, wanting to know where the hell he was when there was an angel attacking and neither he nor Unit 02's new pilot had reported in. "We have to go," he told Kaworu.

* * *

Asuka was already in Unit 02, and Kaworu was ordered to standby just like Shinji during the last angel attack. If the last angel would have hurt Asuka, and this one was supposed to kill Rei? Shinji didn't want her out there, and even as he scrambled to catch up with her he was relieved to hear Kaworu talking to Gendo, something about the committee's orders, but Gendo countered with the spear and how the committee was upset with both of them over that: had Kaworu exceeded his authority to save Asuka by claiming he had orders to take over as Unit 02's pilot right away?

It looked like he had. And he sucked at lying: Shinji could hear the suspicion in Misato's voice when she caught on, he didn't need to glance at the screen. That was good, since he was already trying to dodge this angel, and it was taking over Asuka's Eva.

Like, like Touji…

Maybe he didn't deserve to be happy, he thought with sudden clarity as he watched the angel's tendrils crawl up through the skin of his arm.

Someone… Rei?

No, that was him, just with hair like Rei's, and why did he look so much like Rei? If it was just the difference lighter hair made, then shouldn't he have mistaken the angel for Kaworu? When this was Kaworu's brother? Unless Shinji really did look that much like Rei.

"You… don't feel the same way we do. How can that be?"

Feelings? Shinji felt surprisingly normal, for someone with an angel messing with his head. He should be glad that he wasn't being tortured like Rei. Or maybe there was something about the bleak, empty feeling in his heart. "These aren't my feelings. But they feel just like mine." He looked back up at the angel. "You're lonely, aren't you?"

So the angels really were people, like Kaworu, and Rei (Kaworu and Rei really were people, but Shinji already knew that). This despair, this need for something he'd only felt so long ago that he barely even remembered it: "You're just like me. You're lonely, just like me."

"No." The angel shook his head viciously. "There is loneliness in your heart, but something is letting you forget that loneliness." How? Why did Shinji have some relief from his pain, when the angel didn't?

Someone loved him, Shinji realized, only now noticing that the warm feeling in his heart was still there, even though Kaworu wasn't. This was the feeling he'd first felt when Kaworu hugged him. Or maybe it was a feeling from long ago.

"Adam? Our mother is the reason you aren't alone? Our mother, in a Lilim body?" Teeth just like Shinji's clenched, and the fire in those red eyes was tainted by bitter hatred.

The angel was in his mind, Shinji realized, and felt very stupid that he'd only figured this out now. He could still see the Eva's entry plug and the landscape through the screen, a strange double vision. So the sea of LCL the angel arose out, that stretched out into the endless distance, was in his mind.

Just like what happened to Rei, he though, and what was happening to Asuka now? Had Kaworu only managed to buy her less than a day?

_Rei_. Panic crushed down on him, because there was still Unit 00 to send out to fight the angel. Rei's Eva. When Rei was supposed to die, here and now.

Kaworu, Kaworu would pilot it, but would Gendo let him?

_Of course. He won't risk Rei_, Shinji knew. Not after she'd been rendered catatonic earlier. He'd never seen Gendo look so upset, never see him honestly _care _about what happened to someone else.

He'd never felt so jealous.

It wasn't until Gendo left that Shinji was allowed in to see Rei: sitting there in the hallway for hours, and only Kaworu touching his arm, whispering once that it would be alright had let him endure it.

Asuka had only come to yell at Kaworu, to say that this wouldn't have happened if _she _was allowed to pilot, and Shinji could still taste the blood in his mouth from when she punched him after he slammed her up against the wall and told her that if she said that again, if she did…

When Kaworu might have saved her life by keeping her from fighting that angel?

What was happening to her now, when the angel was inside her Eva too?

"So you really do care about those other than yourself." The angel looked a little doubtful, that eyebrow raised, but intrigued. "Is that what Our Mother sees in you?"

"Your mother?"

"Adam." The angel made a face. "Kaworu."

"I don't really know what he sees in me? I don't remember whatever made him fall in love with me," Shinji said blankly. Why was Kaworu in love with him, anyway? Was Rei in love with him too? At the time he'd thought that couldn't possibly be what they meant, but, but, how could both of them possibly be in love with him? Even Kaworu loving him, _anyone _loving him was so, so weird and unprecedented and surely only Kaworu was weird enough to love someone like him.

"Oh, so you've escaped this feeling by reaching our mother."

_Mother_.

A warm presence, something that filled so much of the world, and then she was gone.

Kaworu was warm, and loving, so of course the angels had to miss him. Of course they would try to find him, if he was taken from them.

It was an effort to speak aloud instead of just in this space inside his head. "Kaworu, I'm fine! Asuka, are you okay?"

"Don't be ridiculous, idiot! This pathetic thing…" might be holding her Eva down, but Asuka wasn't out: one of the screens showed her clenching her fists, trying to move despite the tendrils under her skin.

"Call out to him," the angel ordered. "Make the Lilim give back my mother!"

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Because if they sent Rei, she would die, but the angel wanted Kaworu. If Kaworu came? Hadn't Rei said something about how the angels couldn't start Third Impact with Lilith without her soul? So could they start it if this one got his tentacles on Kaworu?

"Yes, I will become one with my Mother and we will be together eternally," the angel said, and for the first time there was a trace of happiness there, at that thought. At the thought of never being alone again.

Now Shinji ached for the angel, because he understood the appeal. He understood that feeling, the dark emptiness of having no one that wanted him for _him_, only as a tool to pilot the Eva. He'd lived with it for years, having it drag him further and further down into darkness and despair. Then he met Kaworu, someone that loved him just for him, or at least had nothing to do with anything Shinji did except caring for others? He could keep doing that. It wasn't anywhere near as hard as Eva piloting. It wasn't like Shinji was that compassionate.

Kaworu must just have really low standards, but that itself was kind of reassuring, since as long as they stayed this low Shinji would still meet them. Kaworu wouldn't realize that Shinji had to be pathetic and worthless, if all they wanted him for was this. If so many people had judged him and found him wanting, wanted to throw him away or leave him behind.

"You're like me," Shinji said, and not just because the angel was wearing his face. "Your mother left you. These feelings."

Red eyes stared at him from his own face, surprise mingled with dawning desire. Not sexual desire, thank goodness, but a bone-deep wanting. "Will you become one with me? If my mother loves you, then if we become one, she will love me and want to be one with me."

It was a miracle neither Rei nor Kaworu were out here already: Rei would be the obvious one to send, since it was her Eva, if she wasn't recovering from the last angel attack. It wasn't as though that would make Gendo hesitate to send her out anyway… Well, it wouldn't if it was Shinji. Who knew, when it was Rei?

Worry let him focus on the outside world, and realize that the pounding in his ears wasn't just his heartbeat. Another Eva. "Don't come!" he yelled, but knew what he wanted would be ignored, as always. "The angel wants to catch you, too!" It wanted to catch Kaworu, but if it would kill Rei? Maybe Kaworu could protect himself somehow, if he was another angel?

"It's alright, Shinji."

Kaworu.

Who didn't even make an effort to avoid the angel's strike, even as Misato demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing.

"Becoming one just means the new being wouldn't be either of us. We would be _dead_, both of us. All of us. You want to kill this entire world, just because you're lonely? You want to kill yourself, to escape your loneliness? Because there's no difference between complementation and suicide! Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves!" Kaworu raged, teeth bared and Shinji really hoped that was a reflection, a trick of the light, that made his eyes glow for a moment. He hoped Misato would believe that, since it was too much to hope she hadn't noticed. "Love? Loving someone means wanting them to live! You want to become one with me, when that would make me cease to be: that means you want me to die! That's the opposite of love! There are people on this world who want to live! Those who want to deprive them of their lives, their chances to find happiness, so that they can be together in _death? _People like that are disgusting! If you want to die, then die! I won't let you kill anyone else!"

_Mother is angry._

_Mother hates me._

Those weren't Shinji's feelings, even if he felt them as his own. They were the feelings of the angel who had grabbed him now, was trying to pry his mouth open now, because Mother had rejected becoming one with him, mother hated him, but if he was Shinji then his mother would love him again.

Shinji wanted to tell him it didn't work that way. If Kaworu was right, then if the angel took him over what was left wouldn't be Shinji anymore. Maybe Kaworu might love the new person, his standards seemed a little low (not a murdering bastard?), but possibly not, when that person would be a reminder that Shinji was _dead_.

"Let go of him!" Kaworu's voice, not in the distant, wavering outside but in this space, in this shared mind.

So it had to be Kaworu's arms that pulled the other angel off him.

It was definitely Kaworu's fist that gave the other angel a black eye, Shinji saw when he opened his own.

"I didn't want to do this," Kaworu said, low and angry, standing there on the mental sea of LCL, glaring down at the angel he'd knocked to the ground, "but _come and get me_."

The sea was gone: Shinji blinked and a moment later the outer world regained its clarity. He could feel the tendrils pulling out of his body, leaving his Eva.

Everything, rushing towards Unit 00. Towards Kaworu.

Shinji was still getting his Eva to its feet, trying to get over there to _help him_, when Unit 00 exploded.

The shockwave knocked him back down to his knees, and he wished the blast had deafened him. Because then he wouldn't have had to hear Maya's shocked voice reporting that the Magi had detected another AT field.

Maybe if looking directly at the blast had blinded him, he wouldn't have had to see Kaworu hovering there, knowing that NERV's cameras had to be seeing the same thing. Seeing Kaworu glow like this made Shinji so deeply afraid. Not for himself, but, "_He's going to die_."

"If you have to die, it's kinder for it to be at the hands of the person you love," Kaworu said, seemingly to himself, and that did _not _help Shinji's feeling of foreboding. "I would have offered to kill you kindly, with my hands, but you just _had _to try to kill Shinji, didn't you. People who try to hurt him: they don't deserve any kindness. Not when they wanted to hurt someone so kind." He looked up now, and Shinji knew he'd been addressing the angel. The dead angel.

"Shinji, Kaworu is the Twelfth Angel." It was Misato saying his name that got Shinji's attention: he'd been tuning out the sound coming from NERV because he didn't want to hear it.

This was it. This was when he would be ordered to kill Kaworu. His grip tightened on the controls. He wouldn't do it. He absolutely won't do it. He got into this thing to protect Rei: even if his father used the dummy plug to make him kill Touji, he won't. He won't be used to harm anyone he cares about ever again, no matter how his father tries to make it happen.

Kaworu put his hands on the hips of his plugsuit. "Hey, Shinji's old man!" he called. "I'll bring your wife out of the Eva, give her a Lilim body again, if you help me against the other old men! She'll still have an S2 engine, so she'll have the fruits of Life and Wisdom and be a 'god' if that qualifies anyway! You won't have to worry any more about the old men killing her!"

Shinji was used to his father's menacing silences, but was it only his imagination that this one seemed thoughtful?

"You can be together forever," Kaworu said, sing-song.

And smirked.

* * *

"Oh, Shinji… I'm sorry I had to leave you like that," a voice from so long ago said, holding him to her body.

Even though she'd come from his Eva, and his Eva was connected to so many horrible memories, he still felt safe here. Felt the corners of his eyes growing moist, a strange combination of old sorrow and new happiness, here amidst the wreckage of Tokyo-3. By the piano where he'd first met Kaworu.

"If I hadn't gone into the Eva, SEELE would have had me killed. I didn't know how much of me would survive, but at least this way I had a chance to keep protecting you."

"And at least that way you'd get to die on your own terms," Kaworu said, nodding. "So you'll keep your end of the bargain this time, too?"

"You asked me to hug Shinji and punish my husband for failing to take care of him, right?" Yui asked, smiling sweetly and kindly. "That man… I _told him," _she said, smile turning into a snarl, voice into a growl, and now Shinji could see the resemblance to his Eva, to the behemoth which had gone berserk to protect him, the monster that devoured an angel alive.

"Would you mind starting soon?" Kaworu asked, frowning as he held something that looked like a folded length of black cord out towards Yui. "I want to hold Shinji."

Now Kaworu was the one to make a surprised noise when he found someone's arms around him, Yui squishing him and Shinji together. "You're so cute, I could just eat you all up!" she exclaimed. Then her grip grew tighter, her eyes grew darker and, "If you don't make my Shinji happy, _that's just what I'll do_." She would damn well eat him alive, just like that other angel.

"Mom," Shinji whined, embarrassed, and then realized he sounded like a normal kid, one with normal, embarrassing parents.

"Making Shinji happy is the most important thing to me," Kaworu told her earnestly. "Well, after wanting him to live."

She smiled brightly at him. "You'll make a _wonderful _son-in-law. No excuse me, you two: I have to go _discipline _my husband." And if her eyes glowed for a moment, the way Unit 01's did when it was truly beyond furious, that just made Shinji feel even warmer. That his mother had been waiting for him, that his mother had wanted him to be safe and happy, all along.

"Are you happy now, Shinji?" Kaworu asked him as his mother stalked off, contemplatively whacking the bundle of cords Kaworu had brought her against the palm of her left hand.

Shinji nodded, mind skittering away from that folded-up leather, what it might actually be and what his mother was actually going to do with it and his father. He focused on Kaworu in self-defense.

He wasn't sure about the idea of, well, another guy. That bothered him a lot more than that Kaworu was an angel. His mother was talking about how Kaworu would be a good son-in-law?

The sun beat down on his shoulders, and over Kaworu's shoulder he could see the cat snoozing on top of the piano, surrounded by the remnants of sashimi trays and dreaming of whatever kittens dreamed of. More fish? That Kaworu would come back with more fish? It made Shinji realize how easily his thoughts drifted to Kaworu. How easy it would be to dream of Kaworu.

Kaworu wasn't smirking now, not when Shinji hadn't answered. The worry there: was Shinji unhappy? Was it Kaworu's fault somehow? Was he upset with Kaworu?

Someone caring that much about Shinji's opinion, wanting to know it. Someone caring this much about Shinji's feelings. The angel that smirked fearlessly at Gendo looked scared of Shinji now, of what he might say, because Shinji was just that important to him. The problem now was that Shinji really had no idea what to say. What he'd done to make Kaworu like him. "I'm fine. What would you like?" he asked, because he didn't want to lose this.

"…Can I hold your hand?" Kaworu asked, glancing slightly down at him out of the corners of red eyes. "Or I could play more music for you. Will you sit on the piano bench with me while I do that?"

So all he wanted in return for his caring was Shinji's company? "Sure," he said, blushing. "I can do that."


	17. Who is the Pet Exactly?

_This was my first attempt at writing a happy oneshot to round out this collection for Literary Eagle. It didn't go where I wanted it to go, so I wrote her something else, but it did end up with some cute scenes in it so I've decided to go ahead, add a little more and publish it for you._

_I really should write something with how a recently translated section of the All About Kaworu Nagisa: A Child of the Evangelion book said that manga Kaworu was nine days old when he died, had that little time to experience the world his anime version loved, but here's this instead._

* * *

The men in suits didn't respond to his hello or tentative attempt at a smile. When Shinji turned around, his father was already gone.

The men don't respond when he asked where they were going. Or when he cried, either.

He cried himself to sleep on the plane.

When they got there, people took his clothes off and thoroughly scrubbed him, talking at each other over his head. He was pushed into a room of big black rectangles without being given more clothes first.

The distorted voices were scary and not having any clothes was weird. They asked him who he was, and then talked over his head in a language he didn't understand while he shivered there in the cold of the dark, air-conditioned room, arms wrapped around himself in a futile attempt to stay warm. He recognized his mother's name, and his father's, and the phrase 'Third Child' was repeated enough times that it seemed vaguely familiar when he heard it from the scientists later. It wasn't until much later that he found out what it meant.

He was still desperately tired, and cranky, when he was pulled into another room. One with a big tube, with a pale boy his own age floating in it.

Shinji blinked at it, because maybe it wasn't weird not to wear clothes here? Wherever he was. Wherever the people his father gave him to had taken him.

That was when red eyes blinked open, looking at him curiously.

"First impressions?" the other boy was asked (Shinji was still ignored, but he'd decided that it was better to be ignored by the people here) when the weird red-orange stuff drained out of the tube and he walked out.

"It's my size," the boy said, curious. Staring at Shinji, he wondered, "Is this the socialization test subject?"

"Yes," he was told as he stared at Shinji.

"And I can keep it?"

"As long as you don't damage it."

The other boy nodded, not even bothering to look at the man. Head cocked to the side, he looked at Shinji as though he was trying to memorize every detail of him.

"Um, my name is Shinji," Shinji said in a small voice, blushing.

"Shinji Ikari, the Third Child."

The other boy frowned. "Is it okay to use names?"

"In this situation, you should introduce yourself," he was told.

"My name is Kaworu Nagisa," he said, sounding out the syllables as though the name itself was new to him, even if not as new and fascinating as Shinji. "Shin-ji-i-ka-ri," he said, just like his own name. "You're the socialization test subject, but that takes a long time to say too. One of them said you were going to be my pet. That sounds better." Shorter. He turned his silver head to look up at the escort now. "I can really touch him and I won't have to go back in the tube?"

"As long as you don't seriously damage him. If he's injured, he'll be removed long enough to heal," the man said, frowning down at the strange boy, who had already turned away from him and was walking over to Shinji.

"I know, Lilim are fragile," he said, a little sing-song, as though he was reciting a lesson.

His hand came down on the top of Shinji's head.

Shinji flinched, and the hand withdrew.

"I didn't hurt you already, did I?"

Shinji shook his head, curling in his shoulders and shivering, only mostly from the chill air.

"Oh, it's just scared," the other boy realized, and touched Shinji's head again, on the cheek this time. "It's squishy."

"He. He is just scared," the man corrected him. He didn't comment on the squishy.

"But aren't test subjects it?" the boy said almost cheerfully, although that was mostly because he was occupied with poking at Shinji. "To avoid getting attached to the subjects."

"Yes, but in normal social contexts, 'he' is appropriate."

The boy nodded, clearly not really paying attention. "You don't have to be scared, pet. I'm not going to break you. I'd have to go back in the tube then. We're supposed to _play_," that word was spoken with the same excitement as 'cake' or 'amusement park' or some other special treat, "and I'll be able to talk to you as much as I want, but only if I don't break you. They think I'll get bored because you're just a Lilim, but it's really boring in the tube, and all the other Lilim are boring. But you're my size, and I can touch you as much as I want!"

Shinji couldn't help yawning, and then he felt a little scared, seeing the boy's frown. "You think I'm boring?"

"I believe the subject is tired," the man said.

Red eyes blinked at him, before finally realizing, "Ooooh. Get it some coffee-get _him _some coffee, then."

Seeing that the other boy wasn't mad at him, Shinji was relieved enough to lean against him when pale arms wrapped around him. His skin was cool, but his body was a little warmer than the cold air and Shinji was tired and wanted to be held.

"Small children aren't supposed to be given coffee. Sleep is called for."

"Sleep? But he just got here-sleep on the _bed?" _There was that animated tone of voice again, as though 'bed' was one of those new and exciting things like amusement parks and ice cream.

"…Yes."

That was when Shinji found himself being dragged bodily through the halls. The other boy was very strong, almost as strong as a grown-up, and it occurred to Shinji that if he stopped stumbling along behind him… Yes, he was picked up.

It was less nice to be thrown into a bed, and while normally Shinji liked jumping on beds (when his parents weren't there to scold him), he discovered that he liked it less when someone else started jumping on the bed when he wanted to sleep.

So he started bawling, and Kaworu stopped bouncing and instead started touching him again and asking if he'd broken him, making worried noises. The adult was no help (adults never were now, Shinji soon learned), so Shinji had to get under the covers by himself and make Kaworu get under them too since he didn't know how either. It made him wriggle, but at least he wasn't bouncing anymore.

He was warm when he wrapped around Shinji to make sure that no one took his pet away in the night, and also because it seemed to make Shinji feel a little better, enough that his sobs were quieter and he pressed his face to Kaworu's chest.

No one had really held him since his mother had died, even if Kaworu didn't know anything about holding people or tucking them in or reading bedtime stories, even after the person who came when Kaworu called told him that this was crying, not leaking, and no, he hadn't broken his new pet Lilim _already_.

* * *

"It has already become clear that the boy is useless as leverage on Gendo Ikari." Holding his son hostage hadn't made the man start treating the committee with the respect it deserved. At all.

"Perhaps, but he has already shown his value as leverage on Tabris."

"Have we been reading the same reports? It was a mistake to allow him this much exposure to outside influence. He appears to have developed a taste for it." For the illusion of freedom. For the world outside the life support module where he was normally kept.

"Inevitable. Childish minds are easily enthralled by novelty. This was done in accordance with the prophecies." That the last angel would look upon this particular son of man, and find him fair. "Tabris is a nephilim himself, combining the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Wisdom. As much as some of us wished to maintain him in a state of grace, keep him innocent of such things as the clothing we Lilim must wear to hide our shame and control our lusts, simply using our DNA to create him means that he carries our original sin. His AT field rendered him invulnerable, despite our ongoing effort to keep him from realizing this. The Ikari boy is a mere Lilim." Vulnerable. It would be easy to have him killed. All they needed to do was make sure that the angel would care about threats to him, and the angel of free will would become their tame angel in truth.

No member of SEELE needed that spelled out for them. They were familiar with such tactics.

* * *

Humming and several smells, chief among them _coffee _came from Misato's kitchen. Since she took in the Third Child, an actual breakfast had become part of the morning routine somehow. Probably because of how the nose was hooked into the hindbrain.

A young man in her kitchen, cooking up Western breakfast foods including these addictive sausages made with chicken and apple.

A pretty handsome young man wearing nothing but an apron, on the grounds that he didn't want anything splattering on his clean clothes.

She'd heard of nudist colonies, but when he came to her squawking about her penguin, she'd expected more of a reaction when he realized he was naked. Something more than a pause of a few seconds while he tried to figure out what she was pointing at him for, followed by a mutter of, "Right, clothes," before he headed back into the bathroom.

* * *

"I'm not eating." He frowned at them, kicking the back of the chair. "I want Shinji's cooking."

"This isn't from the facility's cafeteria, we ordered-"

"I don't care. I'm not eating anything but Shinji's cooking." So there. The angel's eyes narrowed, pulling up his legs under him as he sat on the table, pale skin seeming to glow in the room's artificial light. An intimidating sight because the angel could indeed glow with its own light, its own power, and that happened when it called its power to the surface. When it was _angry_. "I don't have to eat, so what do you care if I eat anyway? Bring back Shinji, or let me go to where he is."

For now, it was only annoyed, a childish pout on its face after they'd succeeded in placating it with a letter from the Third Child. At first they'd thought it was ridiculous that the other subject was writing every day – did he really think those letters would be allowed to go through, even if sensitive material was avoided? – but they had become indispensable quickly.

Moodiness was characteristic of teenagers, and this teenager was an angel. On top of that, it contained the spirit of the angel that had nearly destroyed the planet. It wasn't that they had forgotten that, but it had been excitable, but placid. Contained. Shinji Ikari had kept it pleased and under control, or so it seemed in hindsight. At the time, they'd thought demands for excursions to beaches and water parks were irrational, unreasonable and dangerous, but compared to what Tabris demanded in Shinji's absence? "The Third Child is in Tokyo-3." They'd _known _this would happen. For five years now, after the Committee decided how much the two of them would be told. "It isn't your time to go there yet."

"Then bring him back. Send the Second Child for now. She's better than him in the simulations, right? It only makes sense. Bring back my Shinji, or let me go to him. If he gets hurt…" If the only Lilim this angel cared a fig for was harmed while these meaningless mortals barred his path to his side…

* * *

"Shinji?"

"Yes, Misato?"

"Why is there a kitten on your head?"

"He reminded me of Kaworu."

"Oh, your friend from," the nudist colony, "back in Germany?"

Shinji nodded. "We've been together since my father ditched me and I was brought there for training. I hope he's not… Well, I hope he's only causing trouble for the people who deserve it."

"Well," an animal might help the pilot's morale, and it wasn't like having another pet around the place would be a bad thing. "Bring him to Ritsuko for a check-up tomorrow when you go in for testing."

"Her," Shinji corrected her. "I'm going to call her Kaoru."

* * *

"What the hell are _you _doing here, Dead Last?" their new pilot demanded again, hands on her hips. "At least sending my rival instead of me would have made _some_ sense, but how could they send _you? _It's ridiculous!_" _

"They wanted Kaworu to stay so they could use his data for the Mass Production Evas," Shinji said, looking a little dejected.

"And that's another thing! My Eva is the first in the production series, the first finalized model, so why are they using him for that instead of me and Unit 02? Using the Dead Last to fight the angels alongside the pervert commander's doll… It's nepotism, that's what it is! Keeping the best pilot back in Germany, twiddling…" her thumbs while the angel attacked?

"I wish Kaworu was here too."

Oho, Misato thought, smiling. Looked like there was a difference of opinion as to who the best pilot was among NERV Germany's three candidates. Yet if neither of these two thought Shinji was in the running, then why was the Third Child called ahead of the Second? For the first real combat trial of the Eva?

Her expression turned dark. Had the Commander wanted someone disposable to stick in the one operational Eva they had on-site? He'd just thrown Shinji out there without any time to familiarize himself with Unit 01: Yes, it was him or Rei, but had he planned for Shinji to die so the Japanese government would be willing to let NERV break out the N2 mines to buy time for the Second Child's Eva to arrive?

Either way, it wasn't like Gendo would have shed many tears if his son died, and if one of the four main pilot candidates had to die in order to buy time for humanity's survival, wasn't it best to send out the least competent?

"Well, he isn't! The Great Asuka Langley Sohryu has arrived, so pack your crap up and go back to your boyfriend, Dead Last!"

…Wait. Boyfriend? Really? It wasn't like there hadn't been signs, but Misato's time in the UN military had taught her to avoid thinking in those terms: when people were packed in close quarters and started to forget what it was like to have privacy, it was nice to think that no one was looking, or would care if they saw anything. It wasn't just his obliviousness to her attractiveness, or how he'd forget his other clothing but still wear a (frilly, joke) apron while cooking, or how he kept wondering if Kaworu was alright. It certainly wasn't that looking at his face made her think of a girl's (…she wasn't sure why, but something about him seemed so very familiar, as though she should know this face), because that would be stereotypical.

"I wish," Shinji said. "But they won't even let me get authorization to leave the country again. _You _talk to them, Asuka."

"Damn right I will!"

* * *

"Misato!" Shinji called happily, voice echoing in NERV's corriders.

When she turned to see him pulling along a white-haired boy from the hand, she said "Let me guess: this is Kaworu?" She couldn't think of anyone else Shinji would be so happy to see. Happy enough to have forgotten what happened to Touji. She just hoped it lasted.

Shinji nodded. "Kaworu, this is Misato. I found him in the ruins: they dropped him off in Tokyo-3 and he got lost and already found a piano." This, apparently, was typical Kaworu.

The boy's scowl was a sharp contrast to Shinji's wide smile: he tugged on Shinji's arm, wanting his friend to come away from the stranger and pay attention to him. "Why couldn't we stay with the piano? I missed you, Shinji," he complained.

Shinji turned to nuzzle Kaworu's cheek, the pale boy returning the gesture, and Misato could almost mistake it for the European custom of kissing friends' cheeks as a greeting except there weren't any kissing noises and the contact went on too long, as Shinji wrapped his arms around Kaworu. "She's not like _them_: she's different. Otherwise I wouldn't have wanted you to meet her."

"If you say so, Shinji," Kaworu said, looking at her doubtfully. "I know you're supposed to help me be socialized, but I want to spend time with _you_."

He frowned at Misato, red eyes confused and curious over the frown, and Misato realized that he was feeling jealous. And that he didn't recognize the feeling as jealousy.

Ah, young love. Glad she was past _that_.

Even though part of him clearly wanted to pick a fight with her over Shinji, he instead pulled closer to Shinji, just happy to see his friend again. They didn't stop snuggling until they were brought to the command chamber, where Kaworu bickered with Asuka, a long-standing friendly rivalry, as Rei dispatched the angel with the lance after some initial difficulty. Asuka didn't even need to be deployed, although there were some moments where Misato was worried for Rei.

* * *

"They're _always_ like that," Asuka told Misato authoritatively as she put her plate in the sink after dinner, Shinji and Kaworu cuddled on a chair. "Just disgustingly sweet. Pretty and brainless. I hear Kaworu was refusing to eat and just wasting away without Shinji." Pathetic, Asuka said with a sniff. She certainly didn't find it romantic, not at all. Nor did she want something like that for herself.

"Always?" Misato asked her.

"Since we started training together. They were just little kids then," Asuka said, ignoring that Kaworu was older than she was. From his birthdate. His suspicious birthdate.

Hard to think he was an angel when Shinji was so happy with him. If he'd been under observation for years? Observation by SEELE. Asuka and Shinji should be able to tell what was and was not an angel by now, or recognize signs of inhumanity? They were used to Kaworu's quirks and had trusted him for years. They'd been friends for years, and it was clear that Kaworu had really missed Shinji.

So maybe that was why she helped when Shinji ran to her, dragging Kaworu behind him, and told her in panicked tones that SEELE had just ordered Kaworu to go trigger Third Impact or they'd kill him themselves. Maybe it was just that she'd lost Kaji, and she didn't want to see grief like that on Shinji's face. Not after Touji.


	18. You Again

_Birthday giftfic for Petrichorre. They requested manga!Kaworu (whose nickname should be babyworu), but the original bunny I came up with wasn't going to have a happy ending in just a thousand words. After that I discussed a second idea with them, but my brain… _

* * *

He felt wind around him, metal grabbing him. The second wasn't that odd, but _wind_, mmm.

Drifting for awhile, how long he didn't know, he began to slowly wake up, wondering that the feeling of wind on his skin didn't go away. Harder than any wind he'd felt before, gusts of it almost like blows.

"_Wait_," he belatedly realized. "_Why am I alive?" _

He was supposed to be dead. The wind that until then had felt nice, been a new and interesting thing was now an annoyance, was proof he was alive instead of dead like he'd wanted and that made him realize that his lips weren't pursing together the way he wanted, weren't curving into a frown. The novelty of his body had made him pay attention to it, and now instead of being dead he was in a new one again?

"_Like the First Child_." The one who was like him.

SEELE. Those damn old men. So even death was no freedom from them? Even though Shinji, Shinji had… and that was when the metal released him and he found himself falling through the air.

Flying was fairly easy to figure out, although he would have used his AT field the way he did in NERV if something hadn't pushed him to spread these new wings and _wait a minute…_ Yes, that impulse hadn't come from him.

Computers, like the one Iruel tried to take over. This was like Bardiel… this was an _Eva_.

"_Dummy plug system_," he read, the knowledge of the other angels pouring though him. _"The one like me… is that why she thought she was expendable, was stupid enough to think it didn't matter if she died?"_

Oh, hey, that was Unit 02 down there. He cocked his new head to the side. Maybe he could take control of it again? The other Evas belonged to the old men, and he wanted to break their things. Especially since he was one of their things.

The Lilim soul in the Eva was awake and ignored him, though, which was just like a Lilim.

If his new body was destroyed, his soul would go into one of the other clones they'd cut up and loaded into these Evas for their dummy plugs, but perhaps if that happened he would wake up there. If he broke all of them, then if he died maybe he'd die properly this time?

The big white head looked around, even though it didn't have eyes and he was seeing with the sensors. Habit, from his old body? Whatever, what mattered was that he didn't see Shinji and Unit 01. Where was Shinji? Maybe he was in Unit 02, since Asuka got broken?

He turned back to the other Evas, which were attacking Unit 02, ignoring the commands sent to him and finally cutting off the connection, annoyed. It was one thing if it was just some Lilim in there, but what if it was Shinji? The thought made his new wings flare out, shaking with the need to do something and oh, this was worry. Also maybe anger? Like when Shinji got angry after seeing the kitten hurt, the thought of these things made to trap his soul hurting Shinji?

Kaworu tackled one of them and bit off its head before he felt the power in the body under him, the presence of a core.

Then they did something to the two-handed blades they were holding, turning them into spears. Like the lance Rei threw to kill Arael, after Asuka was already broken because it wasn't like the other Lilim cared enough to move faster and actually save her.

Shinji, though… he wanted to save Shinji. When Shinji granted his wish.

Kaworu jumped back just in time, wishing he could talk in this body. Talk to Shinji.

Try to convince the Lilim in the red Eva not to attack him, although the white Eva Kaworu had decapitated getting up was probably why Unit 02 didn't, not even after Kaworu started hovering over the Eva's power cord in order to protect it, so Shinji wouldn't end up on a timer.

So even Lilim were smart enough to figure that two against eight was better than one against nine, although the Lilim wasn't stupid enough to hand him one of the two spears it quickly captured. That was fine, Kaworu could fetch his own.

There were four of them left when Unit 01 launched.

Unit 01.

Shinji.

Shinji: that was all Kaworu could think about, vibrating with excitement now and leaving Asuka's side to hover around Shinji, landing next to him and leaning forward but not touching because Shinji wouldn't want to be touched, even though Kaworu would love him forever for granting his wish and that meant he wanted to touch Shinji, and kiss Shinji, and absolutely keep him safe. He wanted Shinji to live, since Shinji ceasing to exist? For Kaworu to cease to exist was one thing, something that would put him beyond the reach of the old men, but for there to be no more Shinji? He couldn't bear that.

Unit 01 was standing there, frozen, trying to figure out if he was an enemy or not or what he thought he was doing.

He really wanted to kiss Shinji… Oh!

If he kissed Shinji, then maybe Shinji would realize this was him?

His mouth wasn't the same, but the people on the screen were talking about hearts, and that was probably something like a core and his should be about the same, since it was all based on Adam.

Shinji flailed, losing his balance and falling when the supposedly-allied Eva tackled him. He wanted to yell for Misato, or scream for Asuka to pull it off him when the thing's mouth opened impossibly wide and engulfed Unit 01's, its arms wrapped around his Eva and excited wings flapping and pulling even the bulk of both their Evas up off the ground a little. What kind of maniac would just go and kiss someone in an Eva?! …_Wait _a minute.

"Kaworu?!"


End file.
